A healthy heart leads to a healthy body, more often than not. Your heart rate is often examined to determine your body's health level, and exercise can have a considerable influence on your resting pulse. Typically, a higher-than-average heart rate can indicate poor overall health, while very fit people tend to have lower resting heart rates due to the heart's efficient pumping. When you do cardiovascular exercise, you should keep your heart rate within a certain range to exercise your heart and, eventually, lower your resting heart rate.
Cardio Benefits
Cardiovascular exercise is the best form of exercise to treat and defend against conditions of the heart and circulatory system. Also called aerobic exercise, this form of training can help you defend against and even lower high cholesterol and high blood pressure, as well as several other conditions like heart disease. Cardio is also the best form of exercise for burning calories, eliminating fat and losing weight.
Training Zones
Exercise is often divided into various training zones based on the workload performed by your heart. These are identified as percentages based on your heart rate range. Anaerobic exercise is a short-term, high-intensity exercise that lends itself to muscle gain. Aerobic exercise, on the other hand, is an endurance activity that gives your body a cardio workout. The aerobic training zone that produces a cardio benefit is best calculated as a function of your functional heart rate range, which is the range between your resting and your maximum heart rates.
Calculations
To determine your cardio training zone, determine both your maximum heart rate and your resting heart rate. Your maximum heart rate is found by subtracting your age from 220, and your resting heart rate can be found by taking your pulse after you have been sitting for 10 to 15 minutes. Subtract your resting heart rate from your maximum heart rate, then multiply that number by 0.7 and again by 0.8. Then, add your resting heart rate to the results. The two resulting numbers represent the range in which you should keep your heart rate to achieve an aerobic workout.
Exercise Types
Several activities can lend themselves to a strong cardio workout. For example, running and jogging are popular methods of achieving a cardiovascular workout by training the heart in the aerobic zone. For some people, though, these activities can be too strenuous -- for these people, brisk walking may achieve the same benefit. Other activities that could be considered cardiovascular exercise include bicycling, swimming, Nordic skiing and some team sports that feature constant movement, including basketball and hockey.
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