Up Your Cardio Game - How to Make Cardio Less Boring

Up Your Cardio Game - How to Make Cardio Less Boring - Little By Little

How Cardio Works:

Cardio exercises help increase your heart rate into the target heart rate zone, which is required in order to lose more fat and calories. Our bodies are full of muscles that need to be continuously worked on in order to make them stronger. Similarly, the heart is also a muscle, and it needs to be worked on in order to be stronger. A strong heart means a stronger cardiovascular system, which will deliver more oxygen to the rest of your body. This leads to your cells burning more fat and calories during exercise and idleness. Cardio exercises make use of large muscle movement over a persistent period of time, keeping your heart rate at least 50% of its maximum level. Before you start, keep your workout gear ready and don’t miss out on an important item; the shock absorber active multi sports bra.

Options For Cardio Exercises:

The trick to choosing the best cardio exercises to incorporate into your daily life is choosing a physical activity that is accessible to you, that burns the most calories while improving your stamina, an activity that fits your personality and that you are comfortable doing. This is as important as wearing comfortable clothing like high waisted leggings for running. Make sure you own a good low or medium support sports bra for most of these exercises. A few examples of good cardio exercises are:

  • Walking or Running:

This is probably the most simple and effective cardio if done right. Just put on your most comfortable and running compatible shoes and off you go. This can easily be done indoors or outdoors, depending on your mood and at any time of the day or night. In order for it to be effective, your pace and intensity should increase the demands on your lungs, muscles, and heart.

  • Swimming:

This is a total body workout that can burn up to 255 calories if you’re not just floating. Mix up your strokes and do a few laps to use most of your body muscles and challenge your cardiovascular system.  For people with questionable swimming skills, grab a kickboard, and do your laps.

  • Jump rope:

This full-body workout, just like walking and running, can be done outdoor or indoors. It is totally cheap, easy, and worth it as it burns 500 calories on average in 30 minutes. A study suggests that squeezing just 10-minute of rope skipping exercise into your daily routine is equivalent to 30-minute jogging. On the bright side, you just need a great Shock absorber sports bra, a jump rope, and running shoes to start off this fat-blasting workout.

  • Cycling:

Cycling is resistant training, and this top-notch cardio challenges your cardiovascular system while strengthening your glutes, legs, and hips. You can easily burn up to 400 calories per hour. 

  • Hiking:

This might be the cardio for you if you love the outdoors and exploring. This workout improves not only your cardiovascular health but also your emotional health by providing a change of scenery and allowing your curious inner child to take the lead. Start slow with local hikes and gradually build it up by going for uneven terrains or even head for the hills.

Other options that can be used are dancing, organised sports like football, boxing, basketball, etc.

How Much Is Required:

The most important element of your cardio is to decide the time period of your workout. As beginners, for all adults, including the elderly and disabled, 150 minutes of moderate cardio is recommended. The breakdown of that time period is 30 minutes each day for five days a week. You can further break it down into two 15-minute sets a day.

However, if you’re already fit and exercising on a regular basis, you could cut it down to 75 minutes per week of intense cardio. The breakdown of that time over the course of the week is 25 minutes each day for 3 days a week.

Benefits of Cardio:

While only the large muscles, such as your legs and chest, are used, the whole body gets the benefits.

  • Cardio exercise helps increase the blood flow and decreases the chances of stroke, heart attacks, high cholesterol, high B.P., diabetes, and some forms of cancer.
  • It improves memory and thinking ability and combats a decline in brain functionality with age.
  • The oxygen supply to muscles is increased, allowing muscles to work harder. This makes everyday life tasks much easier due to muscles’ endurance to increased workload.
  • It helps fight depression and improves your self-esteem and boosts your mood for the rest of the day.
  • It helps doze off faster and improves REM sleep. However, intense workouts too close to your bedtime might lead you to be too energetic to be able to sleep.

How To Make It Fun:

Boredom is the fastest way to lose motivation for any workout. The right way to follow any workout routine is to make it fun by:

  • Creating a killer Cardio Playlist.
  • Finding a partner to work out with.
  • Tuning into a podcast.
  • Change of scenery.
Gist