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Improve Cardiovascular Endurance

If you are currently reading this post, you are searching for answers on how to improve cardiovascular endurance.

Cardiovascular endurance put in simple terms is the ability of the respiratory and cardiovascular system (lungs, heart, vessels, and blood) to stand up to the stress of a vigorous exercise session.

In this article, we will be giving various tips on how to improve your cardiovascular endurance, cardiovascular fitness benefits and explain in easy terms what the definition of cardiovascular endurance is.

Check out The American Cardiovascular Disease Statistics below.

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Cardiovascular Disease Statistics

 

 

Aerobic Exercise To Improve Cardiovascular Endurance

If you are trying to improve your cardiovascular endurance, you will be surprised at how fast aerobic exercise can improve your level of fitness.

Aerobic fitness is about getting the body moving and raising your heart rate. Examples of aerobic exercises are:

  • Brisk Walk
  • Jogging
  • Dancing
  • Hiking
  • Swimming
  • Cross-country skiing

Be sure to add many different exercises into your cardio routine to ensure that you do not overwork any one part of your body, in turn, reducing the risk of injury and keeping you moving forward, and improving your cardiovascular health.

Determine Your fitness level

Before starting any exercises you will need to determine your current level of fitness to know how frequently and hard you can exercise.

If you are lower on the fitness scale, it is beneficial for you to ease into your new cardio routine; Also, you will see the benefits quicker than someone on the upper end of the fitness scale.

If you are on the higher end of the fitness scale you will have to work extremely hard to improve on your current cardio results.

Three Fitness Levels Explained:

Low Fitness Level – you fall into this category if you do not exercise at all or have not exercised in a very long time. Even if you are thin, you should know that many thin people are in worse cardiovascular health than someone who is larger.

Medium Fitness Level – you are involved in any type of cardiovascular exercise at least three times a week such as walking swimming, hiking, cycling, etc.

High Fitness Level – you perform any type of cardio training for at least a five-mile duration throughout the week. Also, you perform strength training regularly over a seven-day period.

Click the button below to find out more about my Fitness Journey losing a total of 35 pounds in 3 months. I started on the very bottom end of the scale but was able to achieve quick weight loss and endurance gains as there was a lot of room for improvement with my high weight and low endurance.

Watching the pounds come off and gaining more endurance is an amazing feeling; However, as you continue improving endurance and losing weight, the big noticeable gains slow down and your improvements come in smaller bites.

But ultimately this is where we want to be in our fitness journey.

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Determine Your Maximum Heart Rate

Determine Your Maximum Heart Rate

After determining your fitness level you will need to measure your maximum heart rate.

This calculates the maximum number of beats your heart will perform during peak exercise. The result is an age-predicted maximum beat per minute range for your cardio routine.

The easiest method for measuring your maximum heart rate is to subtract your age from 220, the result is the maximum number of heartbeats per minute for your age.

This # does not take into account your level of fitness and can fluctuate between 10-20 beats per minute.

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The other method is to have an exercise tolerance stress test, this test is administered by a physician where you will run on a treadmill at interval speed bursts and differing inclines to increase your heart rate to its maximum level.

Determine The Amount of Cardio to Start With

Determine the length of cardio exercise based on your current fitness level. If you are in poor fitness or have been inactive for a long time, you will want to start out walking approximately 10-20 minutes 3 times a week.

If you are in the middle of the fitness level, you should start cardio with 30 minutes 3-5 times a week.

Someone in Excellent fitness condition should start with 30-60 minutes 5-7 times per week.

Be careful performing high-impact cardio such as running, aerobics, and dance as repetitive impact training can cause a high risk of injury.

Based on the intensity of your workout on your max heart rate, when performing continuous exercise try to keep your heart rate at the ideal state for your fitness level.

A physician or personal trainer can help you determine your optimal heart rate during exercise.

There are recommendations, but as I am not a doctor or personal trainer, I am not able to advise as to what your ideal heart rate should be.

Get your body moving with aerobic activity

Get your body moving with aerobic activity

Start with an activity that you enjoy so you will keep up with it; this could be walking in the park, riding a bike, swimming, etc.

Also, go with a family member or friend to reduce the boredom! Or you can put on your headphones and walk to the beat of your favorite tunes.

As time goes on you can add more cardio to your routine as you feel it is required.

You will know when it’s time when your current routine becomes too easy, at this point you have to be honest with yourself and up your game.

Stretch And Cool Down

Stretch And Cool Down

Ensure that before your cardio, you are warming up by stretching and walking on a treadmill, light rowing, etc.

When you are close to the end of your workout, you will need to cool down by slowly reducing your pace one minute prior to, followed by light stretching to minimize aches and potential cramping.

Also, gradually increase the cardio duration each week, bit by bit to slowly allow your muscles to get acquainted with the routine.

Jogging

Get the Most Out of Your Cardio Routine

Exercise at various intensity levels to maximize your progress; current research shows that high-intensity interval training (HIIT) is the best way to improve cardiovascular fitness by combining large amounts of moderate exercise (walking) with small amounts of intense training (Rowing, Running, etc.)

Use moderate long-distance training to help get your endurance to the highest level. When I started training about a year and a half ago, I could barely run 100 yards!

But as time passed and I kept running at a slow steady pace and run a mile, walk a mile, etc, etc! Until eventually after 3 months I finished a 6 mile run in one hour without stopping, and if I did it you can too.

Use high-intensity continuous training to reach your peak fitness. Working out at high intensity does not allow your body to absorb enough oxygen for energy to be produced.

The result of low-oxygen energy production creates an accumulation of lactic acid in your muscles and limits the ability for you to perform at a high level. Do not perform high-intensity continuous training unless you are very fit.

Utilize Fitness Technology To Track Your Goals

With the amount of technology in the world today, there is no reason why we are not utilizing the many fitness technologies available to track workouts, heart rate, distance stats, calorie intake, burned, etc., etc.

We have technologies like Fitbit and endless smartphone apps to track every stat imaginable. I will go over a few of them below.

My favorite app myfitnesspal informs you of what your ideal daily caloric, salt, and fat intake should be for age, height, and weight to achieve your fitness goals.

Throughout the day all you have to do is enter your food consumption and exercises performed, once you save the info it will let you know where you are tracking to your desired goals. I would recommend this app to anyone, as it was very helpful.

The other app I use is Runkeeper. This is a GPS app that can be installed on your phone and tracks distance ran, route, time, calories burned, and progress over time.

The other feature that I liked was the route tracker, the app would track your route on-screen and save, so you are able to bring up past preferred routes.

This app is one that I would recommend for anyone just starting out in jogging.
I did have a FITBIT for a while, and it was great. I am just not a watch person and would forget to put it back on, and the battery would run out, etc, etc.

But for tracking purposes, it was very good at translating workouts to calories burned, heart rate, distance, and progress. So I would Recommend the FITBIT as well.

Cardiovascular Endurance Benefits

Cardiovascular Endurance Benefits

There are endless cardiovascular endurance benefits that have been proven to reduce the risk of heart disease, lung cancer, type 2 diabetes, stroke, and many other diseases.

Cardio fitness improves lung and heart conditions, and at the end of the day, there is no better feeling than being able to reach your fitness and weight loss goals.

Summary

I hope you found this article helpful and can see how beneficial Cardiovascular Endurance is to our health and well being and I would love to see you back at the website where I can hopefully lend more support and answer more of your Health and Fitness questions.

If you have time check out the Health & Fitness Forum on the site where we have a small community that discusses everything that has to do with Yoga, Weight Loss, Healthy Eating, and many other topics. Thanks for reading!