Cardiovascular Exercise

Cardiovascular exercise is sometimes referred to as aerobic exercise, or even abbreviated to 'cardio'. It is exercise that helps to strengthen your heart and lungs.

Cardiovascular exercise is activity involving the large muscles, such as your legs. The word 'aerobic' refers to something that needs oxygen. During cardiovascular or aerobic exercise oxygen gets continuously delivered to your muscles. Outside of exercise, terms like 'aerobic bacteria' refer to bacteria that need oxygen to survive, and 'anaerobic bacteria' are ones that do not need oxygen to stay alive.

Benefits of Cardiovascular Exercise

It is very important to do cardiovascular exercise for many reasons, including the following:

• it helps to lower blood pressure
• it burns lots of calories
• decreases risk of heart disease

Heart Rate and Heart Rate Monitors

To give your heart a proper workout you need to make sure that you do your cardiovacular exercise with a certain amount of intensity, but you don't want to overdo it. One way measure the amount of exertion while exercising is by monitoring your heart rate.

You can measure your heart rate manually or with a heart rate monitor. I prefer using a heart rate monitor, but more about that later. Heart rate is the number of times your heart beats per minute. Everyone has a resting heart rate, which is just what it sounds like - the rate your heart beats per minute while you are resting. Everyone also has a maximum heart rate, which the maximum amount of times your heart can beat in a minute. Your 'target heart rate zone' is a range of heart rate that is considered to be the best rate to be in to give your heart a good workout. This range is between 50% and 85% of your maximum heart rate.

Your maximum heart rate can be determined by a doctor, or you can use a formula to calculate a rough estimate. The most common way to calculate it is the following:

For women:
226 - (your age) = your maximum heart rate

For men:
220 - (your age) = your maximum heart rate

For example, if you are a 32 year old woman: substract 32 from 226

226 - 32 = 194

Then take that number and multiply it by .5, to get your lower end of your target zone. And then multiply that same number by .85 to get the upper end of your zone. For example:

194 x .5 = 97

and

194 x .85 = 164.9

So, for a 32 year old woman an estimate of her maximum heart rate is 194. And her 'target heart rate zone' is between 97 and 164.9 heart beats per minute.

Other methods exist for calculating your maximum and target zone heart rate, including the Karvonen method.

As mentioned earlier, I like using a heart rate monitor to measure my heart rate - they are really accurate, easy to use, and relatively inexpensive models exist.

Cardiovascular Exercise Planning

The amount of time and frequency that you should exercise depends upon your goals. Even 20 minutes three times a week can be beneficial to your health. To receive the most benefit from it, you should do more, and within your target heart rate zone.

It is also important to make sure you set aside time to both warm up before exercising and cool down afterwards. Warming up is just to start exercising at a slower, easier pace for a few minutes. Cooling down is essentially doing the opposite - exercising at a slower pace for a few minutes instead of just suddenly stopping.

Losing Weight with Cardiovascular Exercise

To lose weight with with cardiovascular exercise you will need to exercise more frequently and for longer periods of time.

Exercising Indoors

Many different types of cardiovascular exercise can be done indoors, even at home - with the right equipment. Treadmills, stationary bicycles, stairclimbers, rowing machines, elliptical trainers and ladder climbers can all be used to exercise with.

Exercising Outside

If you would like to exercise outside there are also many aerobic activities you can do this with. These include walking, running, bicycling, swimming and skating.

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