Katalin Rodriguez-Ogren has a nice review of cardiovascular fitness on ChicagoNow.com.
For maximum effectiveness and safety, cardiovascular exercise has specific instructions on the frequency, duration, and intensity.
Any exercise is better than none. But if you want to maximize your results, it’s better to get organized. Start by knowing the basic principles that have been proven to work.
Exercise Intensity
The objective is to obtain a target heart rate between 60% and 85% of the maximum heart rate (220 minus age). Count heartbeats for 10 seconds as soon as you stop exercising…
There’s no point in slogging along on the treadmill week after week and month after month if it’s not going to do you any good. So what will do you good? You have to challenge yourself to do a little more each time.
If the formulas are too complicated, then just do this: Get on your treadmill or crosstrainer and find a comfortable range where you can exercise for 30 minutes. Make a note of the settings on the machine, the speed, the elevation and your heart rate.
Then next time you workout, raise the intensity enough to bring your heart rate up five beats per minute. And keep that up for 30 minutes.
Do that for a workout or two, and then increase it again. So what will happen? After a few workouts you’ll hit a level that is a real challenge. You’ll be sweating and puffing. And doing yourself some good. That’s the general range you want to shoot for.
But don’t stop there. Over the next few weeks add in some peaks to your workout. These peaks are short burst of exertion, where you get your heart rate up even higher, another 10 or 20 beats per minute.
These higher bursts are not something you need to keep up for the 30 minutes. You just hit the peak and then go back to your sustainable level.
When you get more advanced you’ll want to add in these peak bursts more often — to make them a regular part of your workout. Why? Because they can really burn the fat.
Frequency
3 to 5 days per week. 5 days is recommended for exercise of lesser intensity and 3 days for exercise of greater intensity.
Now, do you have to exercise every day? No, you don’t have to, but you’ll feel better if you exercise almost every day. Three days a week is OK, but it’s really more for maintenance. If you have a big goal, if you really want to lose weight for real this time, you should be exercising 5 times each week.
Why so often? Bodies need this much exercise. In our society where so many people do so little physical activity, 5 times a week may seem like a lot of exercise.
But think about it: in the olden days, which includes all the thousands of years of development of human bodies, exercise wasn’t three times a week, or 5 times a week. It was constant.
There were no chairs. There was no indoor lighting. It was constant movement from sunrise to sunset, always outdoors and always alert. If not, they didn’t survive.
So, if you want a lean body, that’s what you need to do. Because that’s how it’s done. It doesn’t happen from pills. It doesn’t happen from surgery. And it doesn’t happen sitting in your chair in front of the TV or video screen.
Type of Exercise
Continuous, rhythmic, large-muscle exercise helps to develop cardiovascular fitness. Examples: walking, jogging, jumping rope, running, cycling and swimming. Although not continuous, short court racquet sports (racquetball, handball and squash) can be appropriate if the rest interval is not prolonged.
So anything will work that gets you moving and keeps you moving. Outdoors is better than indoors. Exercise bikes are OK. Real bicycles are better. Try it and you’ll see the difference. Treadmills are OK. But there’s nothing like getting out and actually walking, jogging or running in the air and looking at the world around you. It is a different experience mentally and physically.
Have you ever heard yourself say, “Exercise doesn’t work for me?” Well, if you apply this information — and that means really apply it just like it says — you’ll get all the benefits that exercise has to offer.
http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/pow-mixed-martial-arts/2010/03/what-is-cardiovascular-exercise.html
