Cardio: What Is It Good For?
If there was ever an exercise that has had more emphasis placed on it’s importance you can make a case that cardio is that exercise. In fact many, if not most, fitness professionals swear by it. Many of them will have you perform various cardio exercises either to warm-up before training or as one of the main exercises in your workouts. Whether you’re training for fitness or trying to pass military basic training chances are good you will be doing cardio. Lots and lots of cardio.
With so much emphasis placed on cardiovascular exercises these days you would assume that cardio is the be-all-end-all exercise. The one exercise you must do above all others if you want to have any hope of being healthy. If you’re really serious about being healthy you have to run as far and fast as you can until your knees feel like jelly and your whole stomach feels like it’s about to fly out of your throat. After all that’s what it takes to become healthy. Right?
Understanding Cardio
Cardiovascular exercise (aka cardio) is defined as an activity that is sustained for prolonged periods of time that improves the function of the heart, lungs, and circulatory system. They can be low intensity exercises such as jogging or walking to higher intensity exercises such as running, jumping rope, etc. The idea is to improve your cardiovascular system usually by means of high intensity exercises. By challenging and strengthening your cardiovascular system, you increase its capacity to take in oxygen, pump blood to the working muscles, and clear carbon dioxide and other waste products from your system. In addition to that as your heart becomes more and more efficient at pumping blood, your resting heart rate will slow down a bit, reducing stress on the most vital muscle in your body.
The Major Categories of Cardio
Broadly speaking, there are three different kinds of cardio. There is high-impact cardio, low-impact cardio, and finally no-impact cardio.
High-Impact Cardio
High-impact cardio is any cardiovascular activity that involves having both your feet off the ground at some point during the activity. It can also be called a weight-bearing exercise because you are supporting the weight of your body with your limbs against the force of gravity. Some examples include jumping rope, high-impact aerobic dance, running, and jumping jacks.
Low-Impact Cardio
Low-impact cardio is any cardiovascular activity during which one foot remains on the ground at all times. But low-impact cardio should not be confused with low-intensity cardio since many types of low-impact activities are of high intensity. Low-impact cardio is still a weight-bearing exercise and good for maintaining healthy bones and conditioning the lungs and heart. Examples of low-impact cardio include walking, hiking and low-impact aerobic dance.
No-Impact Cardio
No-impact cardio is any cardiovascular activity where both feet are never on the ground. Examples of no impact cardio are swimming and bicycling. When a cardiovascular exercise is performed in water, the activity is classified as no-impact because being immersed in water reduces the pull of gravity on the body. So swimming and water aerobics are no-impact cardio activities. Bicycling is also a no-impact cardio exercise because the tires and frame of the bike support most of the body weight. No-impact cardio is ideal if you have arthritic condition or are undergoing injury rehabilitation as they eliminate most of the jarring and pounding associated with land-based cardio activity.
Why You Should Engage in Cardio
Cardio is one of the most popular exercises out there. Many people who workout often engage in some form of cardio exercise as part of there workouts. For some cardio is their primary means of exercise. The reason is very simple: It’s mostly free and requires little to no equipment in order to perform said exercise.
Cardio exercises are often just bodyweight exercises meaning they seldom ever require any equipment to perform them. Were as something like a bench press for example requires that you have the following:
- a bench
- a bar rack
- several barbell weights of various weights
- various optional accesories (straps, chalk, etc.)
Most of the aforementioned equipment costs a lot of money in order to acquire. Your also going to need to set aside some space in your home so you make use of these things. Were as with jogging for example you only need to have is a pair of good running shoes. Mind you not all cardio exercises are as cheap as jogging. Some activities like bicycling and jumping rope obvious require additional equipment to perform (a bicycle and jump rope respectively). But for the most part cardio is free and easy to incorporate into your workout routines.
The Benefits of Cardio
The most important benefit of doing cardio exercises is that it’s good for making your cardiovascular system more efficient. Most cardio exercises, especially if they are high-intensity exercises, will leave you quite winded even before you complete them. This is due to the fact that when you exercise your tissues will use up oxygen much faster than when you when you are just sitting still. This increases the demand for oxygen in your body which in turn forces your lungs to work much harder to provide your body the oxygen it needs. As a result your lungs become more efficient at doing their job which is to draw in oxygen from the air and eliminating carbon dioxide from your body.
This improved cardiovascular system also improves your body’s endurance. Because your lungs are better at drawing oxygen and your heart is better at pumping blood you’ll be able to perform exercises for much longer and with much greater intensity than you could before. For example if in the beginning you could only do 25 burpees without having to stop to rest, after a few days or so of cardio training you can now do 30 or 40 or 50 burpees without having to stop to catch your breath. This is why High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is so popular a workout. The improved endurance makes working out much easier than it was when you first started out.
Examples of Cardio Exercises
There are many different kinds of cardio exercises. Most of them are just bodyweight exercises. Others may require a certain piece of equipment or a specific environment in order to perform. For the most part, however, you won’t have to worry about needing much beyond your own body in order to perform these exercises. Some examples of cardio exercises include the following:
- Running
- Walking/Hiking
- Swimming
- Bicyling
- Dancing
- Stairclimbing
- Jumping Rope
- Jumping Jacks
- Rowing
- HIIT
Honestly, apart from HIIT, there isn’t much to say about any of these exercises. You’ve probably done most, if not all, of these activities/exercises at some in your life and on multiple occasions too. As far as HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) is concerned, HIIT is just a broad term for a workouts that involve short periods of intense exercise alternated with recovery periods.
HIIT workouts don’t usually last long (they average anywhere from 10 – 30 minutes altogether). That being said they are some of the most physically demanding, or highly intense if you prefer, exercises you can do. As far as what constitutes a HIIT workout the answer can really be anything. The great thing about HIIT is that you can customize it to your hearts content. There is no definitive HIIT workout. The only requirements are that your workouts have to be highly intense.
As long as you don’t have any serious health issues or aren’t physically frail to begin with you shouldn’t have too many issues doing HIIT. If however you do suffer from these issues there is nothing wrong with you doing low-intensity cardio instead. You’ll still get the same benefits of cardio all the same. It’s just going to take you a bit longer for you to start seeing those benefits.
Don’t Get Carried Away With It
Before you go off to do some cardio it’s important that you remember that cardio, while still important, is not as important as many people would have you believe. Too often people get overzealous with cardio thinking it’s the end-all-be-all exercise that takes precedence over all other exercises regardless of the context or goals. The truth is you don’t have to get carried away with cardio. For most people, cardio works best as an ancillary exercise not the primary exercise.
Unless you genuinely love to do cardio or you are competing in a sport that is very cardio intensive you are better off incorporating cardio as ancillary exercise in your workout routines. As a general rule of thumb your time in the gym will be much better spent in the weight room lifting heavy weights than on the treadmill running for miles. If, however, you don’t have access to a weight room for whatever reason than yeah do some more cardio. Just remember to not get carried away with it.