Cardio exercise is beneficial on many levels. Getting our heart rate up strengthens our heart, enhances our lung capacity, and helps reduce blood pressure and cholesterol. It can also boost our mood and may help with immunity. If cardio exercise came in a pill everyone would want that pill.
Running, HIIT, and swimming are all great forms of cardio, but if you don’t have access to a pool, hate high intensity, or are worried about your joints you still have options.
While cardio does require us to pick up the pace, you don’t need to work at warp speed.
To do cardio workouts you do need to move faster, but it isn’t all or nothing. You can build up incrementally. You want to challenge yourself (heavy breathing), but don’t feel a sense of misery while moving. You’ll want to be winded, but not feeling like you are going to be sick.
And while we should all set a goal of being able to maintain moderate cardio for 30-minutes, you can start with 5-minutes and build up from there.
To be gentler on your joints but still reach cardio, consider these factors:
1) Pick up the Pace (but remember it can be moderate)
Try to get yourself breathing heavy, but still able to maintain a conversation.
2) Full Body
Incorporate as much of the body as possible. Use your arms and legs together. For example instead of just a squat, add bringing your arms over head and come onto your toes as you come up out of the squat). Now, in addition to your quads working, you are using your arms and calves. When more is involved you’ll feel yourself start to breathe heavier.
3) Big Moves
Try making large movements. Get low. Then transition high. The bigger the move the more your heart rate will rise, even if you aren’t super fast.
4) Arms Over Head
Bringing your arms overhead helps increase your heart rate, so it’s one way to get that heart rate up with low impact. You can punch overhead or raise them up and down like the squat example.
Every move does not have to be full body, big, with arms overhead. If you stand upright and punch your arms at the air quickly, you’ll start feeling cardio. But if you add holding a squat while you do that, or add a sway to that squat you’ll get even more. So allow yourself to build and feel out what feels good in your body. Look for variety. Just know if you hit all 4 factors above, you’ll feel your heart start to beat faster. And that will be making it stronger.
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