Exercise plays an important role in keeping your body fit and healthy. In fact, exercise is such an important factor in health maintenance that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has set down specific guidelines suggesting that all American adults get at least 150 minutes of exercise each week. An effective way to increase the benefits of exercise is to increase its intensity. A simple way to do this is by increasing your speed, incline or both.
Effects on Muscles
When you increase speed or incline, you increase the intensity level of your exercise. Greater intensity means more work for your muscles. With a greater workload on your muscles comes an increased need for energy to continue fueling the cells of your muscles to perform the exercise. Without this energy your muscles will give out.
Energy Needs
As the need for energy increases, your body turns to breaking down nutrients to fuel the energy production process. Nutrients from the foods you consume, such as amino acids, glucose and fatty acids from proteins, carbohydrates and fats, get broken down into smaller parts that can be used to create adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, for energy. The fatty acids and fat molecules in your body may also be broken down if there are not enough calories of energy available through recently consumed food.
Heart Rate
For ATP to be used for energy, oxygen must first be present. To meet the increased need for oxygen during exercise on an incline, your body activates an increase in both your respiratory and heart rate for anaerobic metabolism to occur. The faster respiratory rate increases the amount of available oxygen being drawn into your lungs and transported into your bloodstream, while your faster heart rate increases the speed at which your arteries can deliver the oxygen to the cells of your muscles. The increase in heart rate also helps remove the waste products from your muscles that are created by the energy making process such as carbon dioxide and lactic acid.
Benefits
Increasing your speed, incline or both provides several benefits to your exercise session. First, an increase in your cardiovascular and respiratory rates help increase the strength and health of your heart and lungs. Second, increased incline and speed increase the intensity level of your exercise, which in turn increases the amount of calories burned. When paired with healthy eating habits, this intensity change can cause your body to turn to breaking down fat stores for energy, resulting in weight loss.
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