We all look forward to a healthy, happy and positive life. There is no denying that we live in an era where time is ‘money’. Our busy work schedules hardly leave any room for us to ponder over our health. Consequently, we fail to pay attention to our fitness regime, eating habits, sleep duration, etc.
However, people’s approach towards health is changing rapidly. Most of us are trying to turn around our sedentary lifestyle by including some physical activity in our lives because we realise the importance of good health, in order to stay happy, healthy and positive.
The first step towards good health would be to maintain our fitness regime. It is crucial to devote a specific time regularly on our fitness. A random pick of any exercise or improper training will not help much.
Whether we wish to reduce weight or simply stay fit, nothing can work better than cardiovascular exercises. All we need to get started is to make up our mind as we don’t need to depend on any sort of equipment or machine for cardio exercises. There are different forms of cardio workouts – swimming, running, walking, bicycling and aerobics. Just choose the one that suits your interest and get going. It can prove out to be a game-changer in your monotonous life.
Why do we need cardio?
We all lead a very mechanical life today without any physical activity. Let’s see what a normal day in our life looks like:
- Rush hour begins from the time we are up in the morning. We get ready and head to office with or without breakfast most of the time.
- In the office, we are busy chasing deadlines, targets, etc. We are all bound to our desk throughout the day.
- After work, we beat traffic and reach home.
- Once we are home, we get lazy to cook and end up ordering dinner; sit in front of the computer or television before getting to bed.
Hectic work schedules with no breaks, constant travelling and lack of nutrition-rich food add to our stress, which is very common among all age groups today. Stress takes a huge toll on our health.
Stress coupled with our sedentary lifestyle lead to obesity. Obesity in turn can lead to multiple life-threatening diseases like stroke, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. A cardio workout can be the best option to burn unwanted body fat. If you include a regular cardio regime it can help you tremendously.
Women are mostly reluctant to try out heavy exercises. A cardio would be apt for them as it is not that demanding on the body, yet can deliver great results. Cardio workouts are an excellent way to remain active and productive in life, irrespective of your gender.
Suggestive Reading: Aerobics can help
Benefits of cardio:
Cardio routines can contribute a great deal to all your fitness goals. You can reap numerous benefits from cardio workouts and improve the quality of your life. They have a vital role in enhancing endurance, maintaining a good mental health besides giving you a healthy skin and boosting your overall appearance.
Let us explore some of the major paybacks that we can achieve from cardio.
- Improves Heart Health: The most important benefit that you can get from cardio is an improved heart condition. Just as our muscle requires strength, our heart requires a similar strength. If we fail to pay heed to it, we will not only have a weak heart but also suffer from other multiple diseases. For instance, we often run out of breath while climbing the stairs. This indicates that we are neglecting our heart muscle. Cardio regimes boost the rate at which our heart functions.
- Better Metabolism: Cardio exercises have been very effective in scaling up the metabolism rate. The more vigorous exercise you do, the better your metabolism. Intense interval sprints (also known as HIIT) increase the metabolism. The highest mark in this process is called EPOC (Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption). An improved metabolic rate helps us to maintain our body weight and even shed off the excess baggage around the waist line.
- Enhances Hormonal Profile: Stress, as mentioned above, can cause multiple hormonal changes in our body. It can suppress the release of certain essential hormones and ultimately lead to negative symptoms like depression and fatigue.
Mostly women encounter frequent mood swings, irritation and despair over trivial matters. This can be an early warning of your hormonal misbalance. Cardiovascular exercises help to balance the hormonal effect in our body. It facilitates the release of ‘feel good’ hormones that curbs impatience or annoyance and decreases the appetite.
Individuals who are regular in their cardio have a much more positive outlook simply because they are getting the stress-relief benefits from these hormones.
- Faster Recovery: Let’s say, you have undergone a rigorous session at the gym. Immediately after the session if you get on to a treadmill, it will help decrease some of the muscle cramps that you got during your rigorous training.
This would further minimize your DOMS (delayed onset of muscle soreness). As a result, more oxygen-rich blood would flow to the muscle tissue, thereby improving the repair and rebuilding process. Cardiovascular exercises can help to maintain the stability between an overloading stimulus and sufficient rest.
Just don’t strain your muscles beyond a certain point by taking high intensity cardio sessions regularly. Learn to manage your body well.
- Controls Diabetes: A daily session of cardio enables your muscle to utilise glucose. People who make it a regular habit tend to gain better control of their blood sugars.
Diabetes has seen an increasing trend, especially among the middle-age group. So, it is highly imperative that we regulate it in the nascent stage itself.
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