Category: Aerobics Cardio

In another article, we discussed Work Capacity, and determined that Work Capacity was one of – if not the – most important factors in improving your cardio.

So, now that we know that, let’s segue into the next logical question, which would be, “How do we increase Work Capacity?”

The main way would be to simply just do more work. Yeah, that’s right – condition yourself to doing more work, by…doing more work. You don’t have to do a whole lot at first – add small amounts to your overall workload.

There are a few ways to do this. You could add small amounts of “active-rest” to your workouts, so that you’re actually working while you’re resting between sets. (By the way, this is a tremendous way to increase your cardio with actually doing any traditional “cardio” work.)

For example, say you’re doing your weight training, and resting 60 secs. between sets. Spend 30 of those 60 secs simply doing jumping jacks. Or maybe do a couple burpees. Or a few jumps. Or 5 situps. Anything like that will work.

Another way to do this is to add in extra work throughout the day. During your everyday travels, figure out ways to increase your physical work. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Park a few extra parking spaces away so you have to walk further. If you’re shopping, carry your items instead of using a cart. That sort of thing. Then you can add in small “mini-workouts” during the day, as well. 5 burpees, 10 push-ups, 10 situps, and 10 squats wouldn’t take over about 90 secs to complete. Do that 4-5 times during the day.

Doing any of these things will help you build your work capacity, and in turn, help you increase your cardio – even if you’re not doing specific cardio workouts. And when you increase your cardio, you’ll find that your overall quality of life will feel like it’s going up.

Train Hard, Rest Hard, Play Hard.

When you suddenly look in the mirror one day and realize you’ve gained a few pounds that you could certainly do without, you have two choices: reduce your caloric intake by eating less calorie, or burn more calories by doing exercises like cardio workouts to lose weight. Those two options really put losing weight into terms that seem too simple, for what can seem like a very complicated problem.

There are plenty of people, whether they would admit it or not; who would rather over-complicate things, rather than go for the simple solution. The truth is you can lose weight quite easily by reducing your daily calories down to less than 1,500 – 2,000 calories per day (for most people). You can also do enough metabolism-boosting weight or cardio workouts to lose weight also (how much depends on how much you consume and how much exercise you do).

You can also seek to reach a happy medium, by combining a reasonable diet plan with weight training, circuit training, or other cardio workouts to lose weight at whichever pace feels comfortable to you. By happy medium we mean you can diet a bit less, and workout a bit less — by combining the two together.

Instead of starving yourself, you can eat a little more than someone who is using only diet changes to lose weight, while perhaps having to put in less time at the aerobics studio than someone who is only using exercise to lose weight.

It takes approximately an hour of walking or running to burn 500-600 calories. Circuit training, aerobics classes and other cardio workouts to lose weight can burn 400-500 calories in a 40 minute session.

Combine that 40 minute session, 3 or 4 times a week, along with cutting back an easy 500 calories from your diet per day and you could easily lose 2 solid pounds of fat a week (fat contains 3,500 calories per pound). This is a relatively conservative estimate, as many of us could eliminate 1,000 calories a day with little effort (E.g., chips, cookies, sodas, juices, etc). Not to mention, as you workout more, your metabolism will increase even while you rest.

Now get started, you could have eliminated 200 calories while you read this article.

Learn more about cardio workouts to lose weight at our fitness tips website.

Cardio exercise put simply is any form of exercise such as walking, running, jogging, cycling which you do long enough to push your heart and lungs to a greater degree of activity.

Many people will also use the term aerobic exercise to describe the same thing but regardless of what it is called you simply need to use the bigger muscles in your body(such as your legs, back, chest) to describe it as cardio exercise.

However in order to maximize the benefit that you will surely derive from cardio exercise it is important to recognise two key factors.

1.Warming Up

Before engaging in cardio exercise it is vital that you warm up properly and those who are most unfit will need to warm up the longest because their muscles will have become unaccustomed to any physical activity.

2.Cooling Down

Cooling down after your cardio exercise is equally important and the reason for this is the necessity to get your body temperature and blood flow back to normal. This cooling down also assists with preventing the blood from gathering at one point in your body which can occur if you have been exercising vigorously.

To derive maximum benefit from your cardio workouts you need to strike a balance between the limited benefit you would gain from walking around the shopping mall and working flat out to the point where you risk injury and increase the risk of infections and burnout.

So, how do you strike this balance?
The most accurate and reliable way is to monitor your heart rate and this can be done by simply counting the number of beats of your heart per minute (your pulse). This can be done easily with a heart rate monitor or a stopwatch and measuring your pulse at your wrist and counting the number of beats in a minute.

The great thing about cardio exercise is that research carried out by medical professionals has shown that you can significantly reduce your risk of heart trouble by exercising aerobically for 20 minutes three times a week. However if your goal is to achieve permanent weight loss then you will need to augment your cardio exercise by changing your diet and starting a weight training program.

The reason for this is that put simply it would be difficult to engage in enough cardio exercise on its own which would burn sufficient calories to shed the pounds. Consider this-in order to lose one pound of weight you need to burn around 3,500 calories; a 30 minute walk will only burn around 100-150 calories, depending on intensity of effort.

In conclusion to obtain permanent weight loss you will need to let cardio exercise form one leg of a triumvirate which must also include a weight training program and a change in diet.

Conditioning is one of those words that gets tossed around a lot to mean one thing, but in reality, it means so much more.

For many people, when they think “conditioning,” they think cardio. This could be in the form of LSD (Long Slow Distance) jogging, interval training/sprints, skipping rope, etc – activities that get you breathing hard and sucking wind.

“Cardio” entails cardiovascular and cardio-respiratory conditioning, or, in other words, the ability of the heart to efficiently pump blood through the body, and the lungs to efficiently take in oxygen and discard carbon dioxide. If you’re not sure what this is, go outside and sprint to the end of the block and back as hard as you can. Go ahead – I’ll wait…Great, you’re back. Are you breathing hard? Thought so. This is cardio.

However, that is only one element of overall conditioning.

Next, there’s muscular conditioning. This is the ability of a muscle (or group of muscles) to contract repeatedly over a given period of time. If you’re not sure what that means, hit the floor and do as many pushups as you can. Go ahead – I’ll wait again…how was that? Likely you’re not breathing as hard as you were from the run, but your arms and chest are probably burning pretty bad – much more so than your legs were from the sprint. That’s muscular conditioning.

Then there is strength/power conditioning. This is sort of the next step after muscular conditioning. Now, instead of your muscles just having to contract repeatedly (were the amount of force they have to produce isn’t an issue), they’ll have to contract at near maximal force repeatedly. Or, in other words, how many times (within a given period of time) can you lift a weight that’s really close to your maximum?

So, if repping out on pushups was muscular conditioning, loading the most you can bench press onto the bar minus 15% or so and doing as many reps as you can with that would be a measure of strength conditioning.

And along those lines, a power-based movement (say box jumps) done for max reps would be a measure of power conditioning.

To have complete conditioning, you must train all these elements – not just cardio, as many people would think.

Train Hard, Rest Hard, Play Hard.

Obesity is on the rise in North America. With the average work week increasing from 40 hours up to 50-60 hours a week for some of us: It’s become increasingly difficult for all of us to resist the urge to eat out on a daily basis at the local McDonald’s, or neighborhood pizza shop. Fast food is fine in moderation, but a busy life can easily make us feel like -fast- is our only solution and that health has to take a back-seat for the time-being.

Combine a poor diet that’s high in fat, with family, along with other social obligations and you have a recipe for weight gain, diabetes, heart disease, etc. Much of this could all be avoided with a regular beginner cardio routine, performed 3 days per week. The common excuse for lack of exercise seems to be lack of time. However, almost everyone can spare 30 minutes out of their day for a quick hearty-healthy workout.

Think about how easy it would be to throw some chicken, pork, or salmon on broil while you follow an instructional video, with a beginner cardio routine geared toward getting you into shape. Most people spend anywhere from 20-40 minutes on average to drive to -convenient- fast-food establishments, wait in line, etc. While this isn’t always the case, many of us waste a lot of time doing things we think save us time — without even realizing it.

Perhaps your kids take up -too much- of your time and they need your attention. There is nothing most kids love more than exercising. Rather than playing a board game, or watching Dora the Explorer — get your kids to follow along with you and do some beginner cardio exercises such as: light yoga, step aerobics, dancing to your favorite songs, take them along to a family aerobics class at your local fitness center, etc.