7 Exercises You Can Do To Improve Your Cardiovascular Fitness

Are you an athlete? Or are you someone who takes his/her workouts seriously? If you are, then you indeed are acquainted with the term cardiovascular fitness. Also, known as aerobic fitness, your body can utilize and transport oxygen while you exercise. Cardiovascular fitness is the cumulative effort of your heart, lungs, muscles, and blood all working together in tandem while you exercise.

If your cardiovascular fitness is high, well congratulations! You are a healthy person. Your cardiovascular fitness is measured on the radar, known as VO2 Max.

# High-Intensity vs Low Intensity

You were satisfied with your long and rambling workouts on the cardio machines till HIIT happened! So can HIIT aka high-intensity interval training replace steady-state cardio? Not really, as both have multiple benefits. Ideally, You have to include both into your fitness regime.

Higher intensity workouts are excellent in burning fat in a shorter time period. It also helps boost your overall fitness and performance. This type of workout has a thermic effect and you keep burning calories long after you finish the workouts. Lower intensity cardio pushes your heart rate between 105-120 beats per minute and helps you burn a higher percentage of calories from fat as opposed to carbohydrates.

This is a kind of workout that the older brigade can do as it does not attack your joints as much as HIIT does. Low-intensity workouts will also keep your heart healthy. So, when you are tired, worn out and not feeling like prancing about in high energy, you can try steady-state cardio, a milder yet effective cardio workout. Take a look at some of the different types of workouts here.

# Walking

Don’t feel like working out? Well, you can still walk! A walk around the block or the park is simple yet so very effective. With so many types of workouts jostling for primacy, walking somehow has taken a back seat, but we have to remember one thing, simple always works! Also when you are stressed and anxious, there’s nothing like a walk to elevate your mood.

# HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training)

For people who are perennially strapped for time, HIIT comes in really really handy. The best part is, it can substitute those hour-long workouts and you don’t even feel guilty about it. It lasts for a few minutes but my, they are effective! And those 7-minute workouts are really a thing! You sweat, burn tons of calories and you feel like you just climbed a mountain because of the amount of fat it burns. Wow, it is insane! I am a fan.

# Sprinting

Sprinting helps burn 500 calories in a 30-minute session and that’s a very efficient way of training. Okay, sprinting for 30 minutes is not possible, but you can include 30 seconds of it and then add a recovery period (walking or light jogging) into your workouts.

Sprinting on a track or a hill is an absolute killer; one of the most effective forms of training with which to assist fat loss – but it is recommended to condition your body before doing it, as otherwise, you run a high risk of injury.

# Weight Lifting

Intense weight lifting interspersed with short rest periods with moderate weights will give you an absolute knockout workout. Additionally, it helps strengthen your muscles, stabilize your joints, and ward off skeletal problems such as osteoporosis.

The type of weight training that works is escalated density training, which helps squeeze the most amount of volume of exercise into a stipulated training period. For example Kettlebell swing vs dumbbell squat. You can set a timer for six minutes and perform 6 reps one after the other.

# Dancing

Moderate intensity dance workouts are great fun, and burn a whopping 450 calories! Dancing also helps enhance mobility and bodily awareness, which stall cognitive degeneration in later life. Dancing helps improve your social skills as you are able to meet new people and also caters to your happiness quotient. Yeah, you dance “because you are happy!”

# Combine Cardio Exercises with Strength Training

Why is this combination so deadly? This works because the more muscles you work on a tandem, the more it challenges your heart and boosts your cardiovascular system. So, doing cardio-only workouts can often stop you from building endurance. If you want to notch up your endurance, you need to add strength-training days into your training.