Cardiovascular fitness is the ability to handle aerobically challenging situations of varying duration. Improving cardiovascular fitness can reduce your risk of developing heart disease by increasing the efficiency of your heart, lungs, and blood vessels. The easier it is to pump blood through your body, the less taxing it is on your heart. Your heart’s contraction strength, the elasticity of your blood vessels, and the efficiency of your blood to carry oxygen all improve if cardiovascular training is effectively executed.
Having greater cardiovascular fitness means you can confidently complete activities that have a cardiovascular demand, such as climbing stairs, hiking, biking, swimming, and even strength training. Being able to move through your day without feeling winded can make a huge difference in your confidence and quality of life. A good cardiovascular base allows you to train harder during strength sessions without feeling fatigued, as well!
It is very common to perform the cardiovascular exercise as your ONLY form of exercise. For example, a typical marathon runner would have a very high level of cardiovascular fitness, but they may be muscularly weak due to a lack of strength training, and stiff due to repetitively working the same muscles on a single plane of motion. Here are some tips for effectively training your cardiovascular fitness:
- Vary your cardiovascular activity. Your body quickly adapts to the type of training you do, which makes it harder to achieve the same results. To continue reaping the benefits of cardiovascular training, change up the equipment and form of training. Biking, Swimming, Running, Sled Pushing, Circuit Training, Battle Ropes, and more can all be cycled on a weekly or even daily basis to keep your training challenging and effective.
- Train at the appropriate intensities. A heart rate monitor is one of the best pieces of equipment you can buy for dialing in your cardiovascular training. Try to exercise within 60-80% of your maximum heart rate to achieve the optimal physiological results. If you don’t have a heart rate monitor, use the RPE method: On a scale of 6-20, with 6 being sitting on the couch, and 20 is running for your life from a wild animal, try to exercise around a 15-18.
- Give yourself the appropriate rest intervals. Try to set your working intervals anywhere from 15-60 seconds, and have a work: rest ratio of 1:3 or 1:4. For example, do a sprint interval on a bike for 15 seconds, and rest for 60 seconds. Total workout duration can be anywhere from 10-30 minutes.
- Progress! Whether you add seconds to your work intervals, take away seconds from your rest intervals, or increase the total number of intervals you perform in a given workout, always progress! Your body will adapt to your workouts quickly, so you must remember to strive for more challenging sessions over time.
