The Best Cardio Workout for Women
What is cardiovascular exercise?
Cardiovascular exercise is one of the basic components of fitness. To enjoy a healthy lifestyle everyone needs to incorporate cardiovascular exercise into their daily life. Cardiovascular, or aerobic exercise, is any kind of exercise that makes you breathe hard when you are performing it. Cardiovascular exercise works the heart and lungs as well as other muscle groups. Women need to include a cardio workout in their fitness routines because cardio helps keep the heart healthy, improves cholesterol levels, and lowers the risk of heart disease. It’s important in maintaining a healthy weight as well as lowering the risk of osteoporosis.
How Much, How Often?
According to the American College of Sports Medicine, women should aim for 20-60 minutes of cardio, 3 to 5 days a week in order to improve fitness levels. Be sure to include a period of warm-up and cool-down too. Don’t stretch your muscles while warming up, however. You should warm up your muscles before you begin any stretching exercises. After warming up with some walking or slower exercise, perform an all-over quick stretch routine. When the muscles are limber, you’re ready to begin your cardiovascular routine. Work toward your target heart rate for the specified amount of time. Follow the workout with a cool-down and more stretches.
Afraid you don’t have an hour to spare for cardio? It’s o.k. to get your cardio in increments of 10 minutes, as long as it adds up to at least 30 total minutes of exercise during the day, and you do this most days of the week. This will help you maintain current fitness levels and stay healthy.
Your Target Heart Rate
Some of the best cardio workouts for women are intense. We’ve all been tempted to take a slow, relaxing stroll around the block and call it a day, but we really can’t call it cardio, can we?
How intense should your cardiovascular exercise effort be? You’ll need to calculate your target heart rate in order to figure out how fast your heart should be beating during exercise. It’s a simple little calculation: (220 - your age X .70 = target heart rate) (calculated at 70% of maximum)
Take your pulse once or twice during your workout to see if you’re within range. Rather not? Just say a few sentences out loud. If it’s easy to talk, you might wanna increase the intensity of your exercise, but if it’s really hard to speak, you might just be going at it too hard. In that case, tone it down a little. For the right intensity, you should be able to converse, but find that it’s more comfortable not to talk.
What are Some Good Forms of Cardio?
There are many ways to get in your cardio. Probably one of the best ways is a good walking program. Walking is great for people of most fitness levels, and you don’t need any equipment except a good pair of walking shoes. Other forms of cardiovascular exercise include swimming, jogging, running, stair climbing, the elliptical machine, aerobics, kick-boxing, jump roping and most forms of dancing. This is just a quick list to get you started. Any form of movement that gets your heart rate pumping can be considered cardiovascular exercise.
Resources
1. About.com: Exercise: https://exercise.about.com/cs/exbeginners/a/begcardio.htm
2. Web MD: Health and Fitness: https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/guide/kick-up-with-cardio-exercise
3. Sports-Fitness Advisor: ttp://www.sport-fitness-advisor.com/cardiovascular-system-and-exercise.html