Cardiovascular exercise, also known as cardio or aerobic exercise, is essential for good health. Regular cardio exercise can also help you lose weight, get better sleep, and reduce your risk for chronic disease.
There are many other great health benefits of doing cardio exercises, too:
- Improves your vascular system, increasing blood flow and delivering more oxygen cells to your muscles and organs
- Relieves stress and boosts your mood, releasing feel-good endorphins into your bloodstream
- Burns fat and helps reduce the appearance of cellulite
- Strengthens your muscles and bones, reducing the risk of injury in your day-to-day activities
- Improves sleep, helping you relax and rest more deeply, especially if you suffer from insomnia
Cardio workouts benefit your physical health and can improve your mental health, as well. Recent studies have even shown that regularly doing cardio exercises through physical activity can prevent depression.
You can get in a good cardio workout no matter where you are. You'll just have to get creative — and go fast. To increase the difficulty of an exercise, you'll need to do one of two things: increase the resistance (with weights or resistance bands) or change the tempo. We added our favourite, at-home, no-equipment cardio exercises that are effective for spiking your heart rate in just few minutes per day.
With the official start of summer, the desire to be physically fit and achieve that “beach body” is at a seasonal high. Whether you want to improve your heart condition (remember it's a muscle), lose weight, clear your mind or just improve your health, cardio exercise will help.
Strength and resistance exercises can help strengthen your muscles and improve mobility. They are generally done on the spot and may not leave you panting like cardio exercise but they definitely work the body to increase fitness and improve health.
Going to the gym can sometimes feel like a drag, but the health benefits of regular exercise are worth the effort. Cardio exercises are an essential component to help women maintain a healthy lifestyle. But what are cardio workouts? Are some cardio exercises better than others? We’re diving into the best cardio workouts for women, so you know what to do the next time you hit the gym.
