7 Key Benefits You Will Get from Doing Cardio Exercise
Cardio exercise is a way to improve your heart and lungs, improve blood circulation, burn calories for weight loss, and strengthen the muscles in your arms and legs. It can help you develop cardiovascular endurance and increase stamina while also decreasing body fat percentage. There are a lot of cardio exercises that you can do. Swimming, biking, water aerobics, brisk walking, jogging burpees, bear crawls, and cycling are some of the popular cardio exercises that people do.
A well-rounded exercise program should include cardio exercises as they can increase your strength, flexibility, and joint movement through resistance. If you are looking to get started with cardio or simply want to know what the benefits of cardio are, here’s a list of seven key benefits that will help you make an informed decision on whether this type of activity is right for you!
It Is Metabolic Conditioning
Cardio is any activity that can increase your heart rate to pump the oxygenated blood throughout the muscles of your body. But the key here is for the body’s metabolism to convert the carbohydrates and fats (glycogen and glycerols) into usable energy, adenosine triphosphate (ATP), to fuel muscle activity.
When you do different intensities of cardio exercises, they will undergo different metabolic pathways:
- Low-intensity exercise uses glycerols and oxygen
- Intermediate-intensity exercise uses glycogen/glucose and oxygen
- High-intensity exercise uses either glycogen/glucose without oxygen or even ATP that is stored within the muscle cells
It Lowers Your Blood Pressure
When you do cardio exercise can help lower your blood pressure by pushing out more blood with each beat so your heart can function well. When this happens, you are destressing your surrounding arteries and heart, thus reducing your blood pressure. Now, if you have normal blood pressure, cardio can help you prevent increasing it when you get older.
It Regulates Your Blood Sugar
Regular cardio exercise can help lower blood sugar and regulate your insulin levels while losing weight. Studies also show that doing cardio and any form of regular exercise can help lower the risk for prediabetes and even type 2 diabetes.
It Reduces Asthma Symptoms
If you have asthma, cardio exercise such as aerobics can help lessen the frequency and severity of attacks. But before starting cardio exercise, it’s always best to seek your doctor’s advice. They may only recommend specific types of exercise that coincide with your condition.
It Helps You Have Better Sleep
If you can’t sleep at night, you may want to consider doing cardio exercise, not before sleeping, but during your waking hours.
According to a study, the participants with chronic sleep problems revealed that a regular exercise routine integrated with sleep hygiene could help treat insomnia. Those who did aerobic exercise for 16 weeks had better sleep duration and quality as well as great improvements in their daytime vitality and wakefulness.
It Regulates Your Weight
As you all know, proper diet and exercise are the key ingredients to losing weight. According to a study, overweight participants were asked to keep eating the same diet and do aerobic exercise to burn 400 to 600 calories for 5 days a week, in 10 months.
Results show that was significant weight loss for both men and women, around 4.3 to 5.7 percent off their starting weight. They mostly did jogging or walking on treadmills and aerobic exercise.
If you want to do the same and depending on your current weight and speed, then you may want to walk or jog for 4 miles so you can burn 400 to 600 calories.
It Boosts Your Mood
If you’re feeling low, then any form of movement, including cardio exercise, can improve your mood. One study found that people with depression who walked on a treadmill (with intervals for 30 minutes a session) had a significant reduction in their symptoms. This result suggests that when you engage yourself in exercise, there would be a great impact on your mood.
Conclusion
Cardio exercise is great for your health. It strengthens the heart, improves blood circulation, and aids in weight loss. So whether you’re just starting to lose weight or you’ve been exercising for a while, then it’s really a great exercise to incorporate into your whole exercise routine.
The Fit Factor PT is an exclusive, results-driven personal training studio. If you are interested in truly achieving your fitness goals through a customized fitness training program in Wellesley, contact us today to get started!
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