Do you find yourself panting for breath if you had to take a few flights of stairs? You shy away from making a quick dash to your next meeting as you don’t want to be seen struggling to catch breath when you enter the meeting room?
As one of the 5 primary components of physical fitness, cardiorespiratory endurance is an important measure in your overall health and fitness. Different factors such as age, genetics, and physical condition all play a role in determining an individual’s cardiorespiratory endurance.
What is Cardiorespiratory Endurance?
Cardiorespiratory endurance is a measurement of how well your heart, lungs and muscles work together to keep your body active over an extended period of physical activity. It also shows you how sufficiently your bodies can supply fuel and energy during physical activities through the body’s circulatory and respiratory systems.
Why is Cardiorespiratory Endurance important?
- Without cardiorespiratory endurance training, your muscles don’t get the exercise they need, you feel breathless easily while performing small tasks.
- It protects you against many cardiovascular heart disease, increases your bone density, lowers cholesterol levels, reduces your blood pressure and improves sleep quality.
- If you are trying to lose weight, cardiorespiratory fitness is crucial. Aerobic activity is essential to burn calories and lose weight. It is also necessary if you want to maintain strong heart health and keep the weight off in the long run
The bottom-line: With good cardio endurance, you can prevent or cure:
- Diabetes
- Drowsiness
- Obesity
- Fatigue
- Breathlessness
- Heart diseases
How to build up your cardiorespiratory endurance levels
The best way you can build your cardio respiratory endurance is by performing physical activities at a medium level of intensity for an extended period.
Medium level of intensity exercise refers to a level of exertion during a physical activity that raises your heart rate to a point where you sweat and feel a bit breathless, yet you can talk to a person while performing the activity.
For a beginner, a good routine procedure starts with a warm up of the muscles, followed by exercising for at least 20 minutes and finishing up with a cooling down stretch or exercise to return the heart to its normal rate.
“So what exercises should I do?” you might ask. Any workout that gets your heart racing is ideal for cardiorespiratory endurance. The most common workouts include:
- Brisk Walking
- Jogging
- Cycling
- Slope walking
- Jump rope
- Running
Seems easy enough? It will be until you find yourself breathless and panting after a long run or walk.
Maintaining a healthy cardiorespiratory endurance level is great for your healthier future and living.
Of course, this is just a small part in the whole fitness regime. But all the rest is for a different day!
Until then, Stay healthy, Think healthy and be healthy!
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