Best Cardio Exercises
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Cardio exercises are a must if you want to lose weight and tone your body. But they’re also beneficial for people who need help controlling health conditions such as diabetes or high blood pressure.
The type and intensity of the cardio exercises that you can do vary and you can easily find one or more than you enjoy doing. There are many to choose from – some are more fun than others.
Walking or Running
When it comes to cardio exercises, sometimes the simplest kind can be the easiest one to get started with. This is why many people choose to get involved with walking or running.
If you’re someone who doesn’t have a long history of exercise participation, then you might want to start out with walking and graduate to running. Either one of them can help you to get physically fit, improve your heart health, and give you an influx of energy.
Walking or running will also keep your stress level down, give you a boost in feel good endorphins and improve your immune system’s ability to work well. Both forms of cardio exercise can also strengthen your muscles.
When it comes to which one of these cardio exercises is more helpful to a person for weight loss, the answer is running. It takes more effort to run than it does to walk and as a result of that, you burn off more calories.
The amount of calories that you can burn from running can easily end up being twice as much as what you’d burn by walking. Those who choose running as their cardio exercise end up lowering their BMI faster because this exercise can act as an appetite suppressant.
When you run, it helps keep your appetite at a more stable level than if you walk. This means that you end up eating less food so you don’t get as many calories. Running gives you a higher hormone boost than if walking does.
That doesn’t mean that walking should be dismissed as a preferred cardio exercise. When you walk as part of your exercise plan, you can reverse or control diabetes, lower high blood pressure and bad cholesterol, raise your good cholesterol and improve your heart health.
Plus, unlike running, you won’t be putting near as much pressure and stress on your joints and the odds of pulling a muscle are a lot lower. Whether you choose walking or running as your form of cardio exercise, it’s important to make sure you go through your warm up routine.
This helps to protect your muscles both when you start and when you get finished if you do a cool down routine. If you’re someone who doesn’t normally run, you might find it more beneficial to start out by walking, then gradually work your way up to jogging, then to running. This way, it gives your muscles some time to adjust.
Cycling
This form of cardio exercise is among the top choices for people who want to have fun while exercising. It can be done in the gym, at home or by riding in the neighborhood or on scenic trails.
Cycling is a cardio exercise that can be enjoyed by the entire family. But cycling is also a cardio exercise that can change your life. It’s exercise that’s fun to do and can improve all the different areas of your body – including the inside as well as the outside.
This form of cardio exercise can improve your mental function. It can give your immune system a boost and help you to stay healthier than you normally would. It’s a great weight loss tool and is known to help your body shed fat faster than other types of exercise.
Cycling can give you energy like you’ve never had. Cycling can cut out insomnia and give you a good night’s rest. Studies have shown that people who cycle regularly end up getting more sleep and spend less time trying to get there.
There are some studies that suggest the reason for cycling helping sleep is because it reduces stress in the body, which is known to impede sleep. Cycling doesn’t just focus on one or two muscle groups.
It targets your main muscle groups so you can end up with a full body workout. Most people are shocked by the amount of calories that cycling can burn because it is a lot.
If you cycle for just two hours a week, you’ll burn a whopping 1,400 calories. If you cycle for an hour a day, then each week, you’re burning off close to 5,000 calories.
For people who are trying to diet, that can be the equivalent of three days’ worth of calories. Plus, you get the muscle toning benefits to boot. This is good news because when you tone your muscles, your metabolism runs higher.
In turn, that leads to faster weight loss. Engaging in regular cycling also helps your bones be stronger. Plus, unlike other forms of cardio exercise, those who cycle are less likely to develop bone or joint injuries.
You also don’t have to worry about impact injuries, which is why cycling is often the most often suggested form of cardio for people who have a lot of weight to lose.
Unlike other forms of cardio exercises, instead of putting added stress on the joints and tendons of the body as a whole, cycling works to strengthen them. Just like running, cycling works to suppress hunger.
It helps to keep the hormone that causes you to feel hunger pains down. Cycling is the kind of cardio exercise that can help you stay active as you grow older when other forms of cardio become too difficult for your joints to handle.
Rowing
When it comes to cardio workouts, most people are hitting the treadmills. One of the most often overlooked machines that can give you a powerhouse cardio workout is the rowing machine.
While you might not think so at first glance, this machine is actually one of the best choices when it comes to getting a cardio workout. Depending on your style while rowing, the machine can lead you to burn between 700-850 calories for each hour that you participate.
That amount of calorie burn is right up there with running or cycling. What’s also great about using rowing for your cardio workout is that you will gain the same amount of calorie loss like you would from running or cycling, but you’re not going to work nearly as hard to reap the same benefits.
When you use a rowing machine to do your cardio workout, you’re going to end up working out your entire body – more so than most other cardio exercises, but with much less stress on your body.
You’ll strengthen your core muscles, which helps you to maintain balance and flexibility. Rowing gives your abdominal muscles a solid workout which can lead to you tightening up stomach flab or developing those six pack abs that you’ve always wanted.
You’ll work out the muscles in your arms as you row as well as your shoulder muscles. Plus, it strengthens the muscles in your backs. You’ll also work out the muscles in your thighs and lower legs.
In fact, using a rowing machine can give you an entire workout. That means one machine can let your body get the same workout to your muscles that it takes several other machines combined to be able to give you.
Another great thing about using rowing for cardio workouts is that you don’t get that hard impact that you get from other cardio workouts. The machine absorbs all the impact for you, which means you won’t injure your joints.
If you’re new to using a rowing machine, remember to start your resistance lower and gradually work your way up to the higher levels.
Swimming
Cardio exercises are highly recommended by doctors and exercise advocates because they offer so many overall benefits for the body. You’ll be taking part in a workout that makes your heart pump harder which in turn is exercising your heart and as a muscle, your heart needs daily exercise in order to stay healthy.
Not only that, but cardio exercises help to boost your immune system as well as burn both calories and fat. Cardio exercises don’t all offer the same amount of health benefits. Some offer more.
Swimming is one of the cardio exercises that gives back more than other types of exercise. You won’t have to worry about swimming hurting your body because the water cushions the amount of impact you would normally get if you were working out doing other types of cardio.
This means that your joints have a lesser chance of being injured. So you can swim longer for a better workout and not fret that you’re going to end up hurting something.
Of course, you do have to make sure that you swim at a rate that does actually give you cardio benefits. A slow, leisurely swim doesn’t give you the same heart pumping, calorie burning workout that a faster swim will.
The good news about using swimming as your form of cardio exercise is that it doesn’t feel like work. It feels more like you’re having fun and enjoying yourself. But you can bet you’re working a lot harder than you think.
Simply performing the strokes needed to get through the water gives your body a workout. It makes your heart pump harder and helps to condition your upper as well as your lower body muscles.
Because it’s fun to swim, you might not realize just how good it is at burning both fat and calories. But you can easily burn a lot of calories. Just how much depends on the type of swim stroke that you’re doing.
You can expect to burn between 250 to 350 calories in as little as half an hour. That means if you swim for an hour, you can end up burning right at the same number of calories that you would if you went for a run.
Swimming gives your heart a solid workout but the actual performance of the exercise is not as hard on your heart. That’s because the water again is giving you that impact cushioning. When you exercise in a way that your body absorbs the impact, it is tougher for your heart.
To get the most cardio benefit from a swimming workout, you’ll want to make sure that you change up your routine. Alternate faster pace with slower pace and change up the length of your swim workouts.
Step Aerobics
Step aerobics is a good way to get fit, but it’s also fun. Depending on how you handle your routine, you can lose weight and get fit pretty quickly. This form of exercise works out both your upper and your body.
The choreographed movements can performed as a group or alone and can be done with or without music. You can choose to do this form of aerobic exercise by joining a class at the gym or by instructional videos online that you can do at home to get your blood pumping.
The basics of this type of exercise are pretty simple. You will be moving from the floor to step up onto a platform that’s higher than the floor. If you do this at a gym, sometimes the step platforms are provided, but at other places, you have to bring your own.
During the exercise routine, you’ll step up onto the platform and then back down. The duration of the exercise and the height of the platform can vary. Sometimes aerobic classes will mix these exercises with other forms of aerobics.
This exercise works to get your heart pumping and it can help tone your upper thighs, as well as your buttocks. Most people who add step aerobics to their exercise routine discover that they experience stronger core muscles and become more flexible.
You might find step aerobics to be challenging if you’re new to this kind of exercise. Keeping up with the moves as well as the fast pace of it can seem a bit overwhelming at first.
The amount of calories that you burn through the workout will depend on how fast the routine is as well as the difficulty of stepping up on the platform. But you can expect to burn over 500 calories for each hour of step aerobics that you do.
You can add to your routine to increase the toughness of the workout. Some people add either hand or ankle weights and sometimes both. This type of aerobic exercise can be done by anyone at any age.
However, there are a few exceptions. This is considered a high impact exercise. If you’re someone who struggles with knee problems, then this is not recommended for you