Cardio Training Workouts - Basic Types of Cardiovascular Exercises

Cardio training is a good way to keep your heart healthy and strong and can increase your life expectancy. When you exercise, your heart pumps faster and stronger, giving your muscles an added boost and helping you to burn more calories. Cardio is the best exercise for improving your cardiovascular fitness, but some people have difficulty keeping up with the demands of intense cardio workouts. For these people, Cardio Training workouts can be greatly increased to challenge them further. Cardio training workouts can be categorized into two main categories: low intensity cardio and high intensity cardio. Each type of cardio exercise provides its own set of benefits and challenges.

Low intensity cardio training involves exercising in a moderate to low intensity for a short duration, usually no more than half an hour, several times per week. Moderate cardio training is a lot more strenuous and requires exercising in a high intensity for a longer period of time, usually one to three hours per week. The purpose of this type of Cardio Training is to build stamina, endurance and muscle strength, while providing low impact cardiovascular workouts that increases cardiovascular fitness.

High intensity cardio training is much more difficult than low intensity, and requires exercising at a higher level of intensity several times per session, usually for an hour or more. This form of Cardio Training requires you to push yourself beyond your current ability, frequently and for a long period of time. This form of Cardio Exercise is extremely effective for burning calories and improving cardiovascular fitness. It's also highly beneficial for preventing disease, improving immune function, and lowering blood pressure.

Cardio Workouts - How Long Should I Exercise For Cardio Benefits?

Cardio training workouts are becoming more popular nowadays with athletes, coaches, and everyday people wanting to stay in shape and improve their health. There has been a steady increase in the number of people who are engaging in cardio training for various reasons. While some people are new to cardio training, others have been doing it for years and are taking advantage of the many benefits that can be obtained from cardiovascular conditioning programs.

Cardio training workouts are physical exercises of moderate to high intensity which relies mainly on your aerobic energy-producing system. "Aerobically" is defined as relating to, involving, or producing free oxygen, and is measured using the oxygen content in your blood as a gauge of how efficiently your heart rate is pumping oxygenated blood throughout your body. In order to increase your aerobic efficiency, you need to train hard, and Cardio training is one great way to do just that. Using a cardio workout on a treadmill will increase your heart rate drastically without the strain of added weight.

Cardio training workouts are designed so you can exercise at an optimum intensity for one hour five times in any seven day cycle. That is, you can do three full cardio sessions of moderate intensity, followed by three sessions of very intense intensity, for a total of four hours. This is called a period of alternation. The Cardio trainee should alternate days and weeks one week at a time. This is usually done twice per year. There are many different models of treadmills you can purchase; some work by exerting the same effect on your heart as running or jogging; others are slightly more efficient, allowing you to burn calories while you are resting.

One way to warm-up before Cardio training is to do some lower leg exercises. These exercises can be as simple as stepping up onto the board at your local gym. As you warm-up your leg muscles, they will become more flexible; and this allows greater cardiovascular efficiency during your Cardio workout.

When you do your Cardio workout, it is vitally important to keep moving. Running or jogging would be a good example of an excellent cardiovascular workout, because you are actually working the entire body with every step, increasing your stamina and raising your heart rate at the same time. Walking, on the other hand, does not actually require you to move your whole body. Even though you are moving your feet, you are not doing anything to increase your muscle tone (though you might be trimming your waistline).

Cardiovascular workouts are a great way to get started burning fat. If you are committed to seeing results, you should do the recommended amounts and reps for one to two sets of cardio workouts, three times per week. To make it even easier, I have prepared a Cardio Workout Menu that you can refer to at any time during the weeks you are working out. You can get started today!