Exercise 101 – Aerobic Exercise
From our article Exercise 101, you know why exercise is an essential part of human health and you are familiar with the physical activity recommendations for health:
• 150-300 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise per week or at 75-150 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic exercise per week (Spread out during the week!).
• Strength training at least 2-3 times per week.
• 10,000 steps per day
Over the upcoming articles, we are going to unpack this for you.
What is Aerobic Exercise?
Aerobic exercise, more commonly known as Cardio, involves repetitive, often rhythmic, movement of the larger muscle groups, that in turn substantially increases the heart rate and acute energy expenditure. This is achieved by the increased demand of the heart, lungs and blood vessels (cardiovascular system) to supply oxygen to the working muscles.
As the intensity increases the demand increases.
Aerobic exercise generally uses more energy in the moment, compared to strength training.
Generally, “Fitness” is measured by improved distance and duration.
But have you ever wondered what’s going on inside the body?!
Clinically, inside the body, improved “Fitness” is a result of the muscles becoming better at extracting oxygen from the blood and metabolising energy, the lungs able to take in more oxygen and the heart pumping out more blood at each beat. With the heart muscle becomes stronger and is able to pump out more blood, resting heart rate usually becomes lower.
Examples of cardio activities include walking, running, swimming, cycling, skipping, dancing, stair climbing, rowing.
🤓 Interesting facts
A literal example of these muscle fibres can be found in beef (sorry vegetarians). The meat is red because of the higher content of myoglobin of the muscle fibres.
Myoglobin stores the oxygen and transfers it to the muscle cells. Oxygen is used to break down carbohydrates and fats, eventually into a chemical called ATP which gives us energy!
Benefits of Cardio
There are numerous benefits of cardio to human health and wellbeing. There are benefits that can occur immediate, and there are some that continual work.
Immediate benefits include lowered blood pressure (through improving the elasticity of your blood vessels) and improvements in mood (with the stimulation of various endorphins) as well as learning and focus.
Performance of regular aerobic exercise can assist in weight management programs, decrease the risk of various diseases as well as improve memory.
How much Cardio?
The recommended amount of aerobic based physical activity is 30-60 minutes per day, 5 days per week. It does not have to be 30-60 minutes all at once. It can be spread out through the day, as long as you’re getting your heart rate up and breathing rate up!
For intensity guidelines check out our Exercise 101 article.
Fun Facts
• Running on medium-hard surfaces is one the best ways to increase bone strength of you legs and hips and back. Our bones respond to the applied force by increasing their density!
• Running and swimming are not only great cardio exercise which use most of your muscles, they are also great core exercise!
This is because you need to maintain optimal torso postures to allow your body to generate superior force through the limbs.
Myth Buster
Cardio does not burn muscle!
This may be true if you are in a nutrient or calorie deficit, but in most cases, this is far from reality.
Cardio exercise has been shown to increase muscle mass and strength, and when combined with strength training, it can enhance muscle growth! For the best results, separate aerobic and strength training by 6-24 hours.
That’s Cardio! But what about strength training, is that important - Yes! Read our Strength Article here
