All exercise is good for you and your heart, but exercise that targets heart health is called cardiovascular or aerobic (meaning - with oxygen) exercise. Aerobic exercise puts a demand for more oxygen on your body. For heart health, aerobic exercise should be sustained for a minimum of 20 minutes. The longer you continue, the better and faster the results. (Look at the contestants on "The Biggest Loser". They exercise for 6-8 hours a day to get the results. Not that I recommend that - the wear and tear on the body is tremendous and that kind of rapid weight loss is really hard to maintain.) The ideal amount of time for aerobic exercise is 40-50 minutes per session. This gives you time to warm up, sustain your elevated heart rate for 20-25 minutes and then cool down. For the greatest health benefits, experts recommend that you do 40-50 minutes of aerobic exercise 3+ times per week. If you are trying to lose weight, you should do aerobic exercise 6 times a week and supplement it with 2-3 weight training sessions.
Here is another little tidbit - aerobic exercise takes place when your heart rate is at 60-80% of your maximum heart rate. Don't know that, here is the formula:
220 - (your age) = maximum heart rate
60-80 % of that number is your goal for optimum aerobic benefit
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