Fitness Book

A healthy heart is the key to a long life.  To accomplish this, every person should have interest in cardiovascular training, which includes exercises designed specifically to improve and maintain the heart’s health.  For this to occur, the body has to be able to get the right level of oxygen and blood to the muscles.  With physical exercise or activity, the pulse speeds up and breathing becomes deeper.  At this point, the cardiovascular system has kicked in.

Through regular, cardiovascular training, you can improve your body’s efficiency.  The key is to learn how much training you need for positive results.  As you will see from the information provided, learning the right level of activity is not difficult.  However, the level of exercise will depend on a number of factors to include your goal.

• Losing Fat – If your goal is to lose weight, then you will need to incorporate cardiovascular training three to five times a week to your schedule, making each session between 30 and 40 minutes long.  In the beginning, start slow, increasing the intensity and duration of the workout over time.
• Losing Weight – Individuals who are trying to lose unwanted weight can also benefit from this type of training.  Again, exercise three to five times weekly, with 30 to 40-minute sessions.
• Improving Overall Health – For those just wanting to get healthier so they can live longer, make sure cardio workouts are done three to four times a week, 20 to 30 minutes in duration.

Cardiovascular training comes in many different forms but regardless of the type you choose, remember that both intensity and duration are crucial if you want to achieve your goal.  This means moderately intense workouts that start with deep breathing if you want to improve health.  Then, if you want to lose fat but you are not in good physical condition, make sure the training is low intensity but for a long duration.  In this case, walking is a perfect workout choice.  For weight or fat loss while already in good shape, your goal is to choose a workout program that will burn the most calories, such as high-intensity training.

Another goal with cardiovascular training is to reach the maximum heart rate, which varies from person to person.  Use the following as a reference for determining your maximum.

• The rate is the number of beats your heart makes every minute
• To determine the maximum rate, subtract your current age from 220.  The answer is the maximum number, to a close estimation.
• Typically, the target heart rate for the best results with this type of training will be between 60% and 80% of the maximum heart rate.  Therefore, if your maximum heart rate were 180, the perfect target heart rate would be about 100.

While there are a number of ways in which cardiovascular training can be added to your life, the best way is to make each workout session different from weight training.  Now, if you want to do cardio and weight training in the same session you can but always do the weight lifting first.  The reason is that doing weights first will ensure your muscles are not fatigued for the cardio part.  Additionally, weight lifting first will slightly exhaust the muscles, helping to lower blood sugar so you get the most out of your cardio.

Cardiovascular training comes in many different forms, some listed for you.

• Low Intensity – Long Duration – Intensity needs to be around 40% to 60%, achieved by jogging, biking, or walking.  Of all cardio workouts, this is the least demanding.
• Medium Intensity – Medium Duration – With this training, you need the maximum heart rate around 70%.  While slightly harder, this is not overly difficult with sessions lasting 20 to 40 minutes.  Typically, you would use this option for losing fat or improving aerobic capacity.  At first, you will find yourself getting out of breath but not to the point of needing to quit.
• High Intensity – Short Duration – Cardiovascular training in this case has a maximum heart rate around 85%.  This type of training is difficult and demanding, usually only done for about five to 15 minutes.

With bad diets and lack of exercise, we see too many people dying of heart attacks, living with diabetes, or simply not living life to the fullest.  Making cardio vascular training a part of everyday life will give you a new lease on life, literally.  Every time you work the heart and lungs, you are giving yourself back days, weeks, months, and even years of quality life.  The exercises are fun and you will feel much better for doing them.