Cardiovascular exercise is vital for anyone looking to lose weight and get in shape. The National Institutes of Health's Weight-control Information Network advises that to stay healthy, you should engage in a minimum of 150 minutes of "moderate-intensity physical activity" or 75 minutes of "vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity" every week. Sample exercise plans are everywhere, so finding something to fit your level of fitness is a matter of experience.
Function
Cardio exercise is designed to tax your body's ability to transport oxygen throughout. As you exercise, your muscles need energy. Energy is stored as glycogen in the cells of your muscles. To convert these glycogen reserves into usable energy, your cells need oxygen. Cardiovascular exercise taxes your ability to get blood to your cells as well as the efficiency with which you can burn energy. Once your glycogen reserves are depleted, you begin to burn the body's fat reserves.
Types
Cardio exercise can take a number of different forms. Any form of exercise that sends your heart rate soaring and gets your lungs burning will meet your requirements. A workout can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be, from a half hour jog every other day to complex circuit training routines, or simply a walk in the park or a casual game of tennis with friends.
Running
The most common forms of cardiovascular exercise are jogging or running. All you need is a pair of running shoes. To begin with, you can run at a pace that is comfortable for you for as long as you can. As you improve, you can run faster and for longer. Once you have a good base level of running ability and fitness, other options to increase your fitness include fartlek training, where you add a series of sprints to your run to spike your metabolism and increase your body's ability to deal with lactic acid.
Circuit Training
Complex circuit training routines are another popular method of cardio exercise. These have a number of benefits over other forms of cardio. They are designed to tax your cardiovascular system as much as possible by forcing you to work at high intensity for short periods of time. By interspersing rest periods with periods of maximum intensity, you push your cardiovascular and metabolic systems to the limit, giving you fast results in terms of calories burned, fat loss and fitness levels.
Considerations
Once you have plans for individual workouts, you need to start thinking about planning your different cardio workouts throughout the week. For example, many of boxing conditioning coach Ross Enamait's sample workouts come with the proviso that they should only be attempted once or twice a week at most, due to their intensity. A typical week might involve a high intensity interval workout on Monday and steady long distance running on Wednesday and Friday and a game of touch football with friends on the weekend.
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