Cardio is one of the most important things you can do for your body, and there are plenty of choices for cardio exercises that will get you to your target heart rate, and burn lots of calories.
There are lots of Aerobic cardio exercises that involve low intensity and long durations such as swimming, kickboxing, and jumping rope. Outdoor exercises can include cycling, jogging, nordic walking, and cross-country skiing. Indoor exercises can include stairmaster, treadmill, stationary bicycle, indoor rower, elliptical trainer, and stair climbing exercises.
There are also lots of Anaerobic exercises that involve short bursts of energy and high intensity. Examples of anaerobic exercise include: heavy weight-lifting, all types of sprints (running, biking, etc.), hill climbing, interval training, isometrics, or any rapid burst of hard exercise.
High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is a short and intense workout that helps you get healthy, fit, and burn fat faster than any typical cardio workout. And the scientific data backs it up. Our bodies aren’t designed to do endless amounts of steady state work. Were built for short bursts of activity followed by short recovery periods. Most competitive sports (basketball, hockey, football, soccer, etc.) are designed the same way. Many scientists believe long steady state cardio increases free radical production in the body, can degenerate joints, reduces immune function, causes muscle wasting, and can cause a pro-inflammatory response in the body that can potentially lead to chronic diseases. On the flip side, high intensity interval training has been shown to increase anti-oxidant production in the body, while also boosting your metabolic rate and helping you to lose weight and burn fat faster than steady state aerobics.
Here are two different options to do High Intensity Interval Training. The first option will really push your body and will elicit the greatest EPOC (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption) and VO2 max improvement. The second option will train your body to perform at a very high intensity for a slightly longer period of time while taking less time to recover.
With this first option, warm up at a comfortable intensity for 5 minutes. Then, give your maximum effort for 15 to 30 seconds, followed by a 2-minute recovery. You can walk during the recovery or you can just take it down to a very light jog, depending on your current level of fitness. More than likely, though, you will be going so hard that you will need to walk during the recovery. Perform between 6 and 10 of these intervals, and finish with a cool down.
With this second option, do the same warm-up as in the first option, but then sprint at approximately 80% of your maximum intensity for 45 seconds to 1 minutes. Follow this with a 1 to 2 minute recovery period. You may find that your recovery periods are shorter since you aren’t running quite as intensely as in the first option. Repeat this sequence for 5 to 8 intervals, and follow it with a cool down.
Your heart rate can tell you so much about your body such as how fit you are, how much you’ve improved, and whether you’ve recovered from your previous workout. Your target zone can tell you what heart rate to aim for during a workout. So, how do you estimate your maximum heart rate? A common method to estimate maximum heart rate for men is to subtract their age from 220, and for women to subtract their age from 226. For example, a 40 year old man’s maximum heart rate shouldn’t exceed 180 (220 – 40 = 180). The low end is estimated by multiplying the maximum heart rate by 0.50, or 90 in our example (180 * 0.50 = 90). The high end is estimated by multiplying the maximum heart rate by 0.85, or 153 in our example (180 * 0.85 = 153).
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