Cardio Exercise : How to Make it Worthwhile
Most people tend to think that doing high levels of Cardiovascular exercise is the best way improve your physical shape and lose unwanted body fat. In this article I will be explaining why that is not necessarily the case.
It is not uncommon for doctors, other health professionals and fitness coaches to preach the virtues of low to moderate intensity aerobic training (cardiovascular training) to people who may be trying to lose weight or trying to prevent heart disease or just to generally become healthier. However recent research suggests that hours of boring, steady paced, repetitive cardio work may not be the best answer after all.
The first thing you need to be aware of is that the human body is built to perform physical exercise in cycles of exertion followed by a rest or recovery period, and not just in a continued steady paced routine. It is suggested that variation (exercise-recovery-exercise…) is an extremely important factor to build into your physical training.
It is a proven fact that excessive steady state endurance exercise can have some extremely undesirable effects on your body.
- Increased degeneration of the joints.
- Muscle wasting.
- An increase in the bodies production of free radicals.
- A reduction in the effectiveness of your immune system.
However, introduce a high degree of physical variability into your cardiovascular routines and this will have the following positive effects on your body.
- Promote an increase in bodily anti-oxidant production
- An increase in nitric oxide response (this is crucial for encouraging a healthy cardiovascular system).
- An increase in your metabolic rate response (great for helping with weight loss).
Exercise that causes your heart rate to increase and decrease rapidly will train your heart to deal more effectively with the stresses and strains of everyday life. Don’t forget that stress can cause your heart rate and blood pressure to quickly rise - steady paced, boring, repetitive cardio training does not train your heart to be able to handle these rapid changes.
The recovery periods in your variable physical intensity cardio training are crucially important. These periods allow your body to enforce a healthy, natural response to exercise.
So to sum up, here’s why you should ditch the long, monotonous, steady paced cardio training in favour of a program consisting of highly varying degrees of intensity:
- Promotes greater cardiovascular health.
- Leads to an increase in anti oxidant production.
- Gives you a healthier immune system.
- Less joint wear and tear.
- Causes an increase in your natural metabolic rate.
- Not as boring and therefore you are less likely to lose interest and give up.
To find out more about how you should be exercising to achieve the best results visit The Truth About Abs.
