Once you decide to improve the health of you heart by increasing your anaerobic and aerobic exercise routines, and then incorporate them into your daily fitness regime, doing so can provide for a solid foundation to strengthening your most vital organ, your heart.
Most fitness instructors will tell you that your body is a temple, and that it should be treated as such. While some may not be doing so, you should be treating your body like a finely tuned automobile, and that your heart is the engine which runs it efficiently.
Some of us will drive sleek speedy sports cars, while others will drive battered old diesel trucks, while others will ride around in a bus. If your engine isn’t running efficiently, then it’ll continuously stall and not get anywhere quick.
Most will take pride in preserving their car as we should our heart. We maintain it the best we can by performing the required tune-ups, and the routine oil changes to keep the engine running in peak condition.
Our bodies, much like our car, requires the same type of preventative maintenance, care and attention. Fortunately for us, we’re able to teach and train ourselves with the proper knowledge to perform the maintenance ourselves, saving us from expensive repairs such as a trip to the hospital.
Learning to be as heart smart as possible may be a challenging proposition for some, but physiologically speaking, it comes down to two basic methods of exercising the body, anaerobic and aerobic training.
The first step is understanding the differences between these two types of exercises, and then knowing how to effectively incorporate them into an effective training program, giving us a solid foundation for maintaining a healthy heart.
Performing Anaerobic Exercises
When it comes to anaerobic training, these are exercises where the body doesn’t require oxygen to perform, this at least for short periods of time. One example would be weight training.
Once you do quick excessive bursts of activity, such as lifting weights, what happens is our muscles will become sore because of lactic acid. But as our hearts become stronger from doing more aerobic training, it then becomes quicker and more efficient to recover by getting the much needed oxygen to the muscles quicker.
Traditionally, any type of strength training has generally been avoided as a method of cardiac rehabilitation, this because of the presumed excessive stress which it places on the heart.
However, recent research is shown that actual strength training is less stressful on the heart as previously thought, and doing so has shown to be beneficial for raising the (good) HDL cholesterol levels, and resting blood pressure.
So performing a well balanced combination of aerobic and anaerobic exercises is recommended. The exercises should be a set of anaerobic exercises performed up to 20 repetitions, and then aerobic exercises performed at 90 second intervals. Complete 3 sets allowing a 30 second rest between sets.
The intensity, length, and the frequency of your fitness plan should vary based on your individual fitness levels and needs. Keep in mind that the key should be to gain the vital health benefits, which includes a combination of both anaerobic and aerobic exercises.
Also know that before you begin any fitness program, it’s always advised that you consult with your doctor or health care practitioner to avoid any complications.
Doing Aerobic Exercises
What aerobic training refers to is the body’s ability to take in oxygen, and then pump it out into the various working muscles. What this does is it fuels motion over a prolonged period of time, such as going for a jog.
What the muscles uses is oxygen along with a combination of fats and carbohydrates which are resident in the body, as well as stored proteins as a fuel source.
The heart is the engine which moderates and ensures that all of the muscles are being adequately pumped with as much oxygen as they need to maintain forward progression.
Once the muscles begin to work harder than what their normal resting levels are, then more oxygen is required, which signals the sympathetic nervous system to tell the heart and the lungs to work quicker and harder.
If our body isn’t in great shape, then that places too much stress on the heart while attempting to complete the task. But with the proper aerobic training, the heart will become a lot more efficient when pumping blood, and will then becomes stronger with each demand.
We can then continue our routine activity for longer periods of time or at a higher intensity when we get fitter, all without feeling tired or getting exhausted.
What doing regular and routine aerobic exercises also does is it reduces the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, which can lead to a potential stroke, this according to the various heart health experts.
Keeping Up With The Cardios
Some of the other health risk factors which are usually associated with cardiovascular disease, include: high blood pressure, obesity, osteoporosis, Type 2 diabetes, and high cholesterol. These symptoms and diseases can all be managed or prevented entirely with a regular aerobic exercise program.
Also keep in mind that it really doesn’t matter how often we get tune-ups for our body if we continuously put bad unhealthy food into it.
It’s advised that you also consult with your local natural health store to find out which supplements can best assist in fueling your body, and help the heart operate at its optimum peak.