All Things Cardio: Is It Really Important?

Cardio is one of the hardest forms of exercise. With Some might hate it, but it is actually important to implement in your lifestyle.

Not only is cardio beneficial for weight loss  but can also help to boost your mood, better sleep quality and helps combat health conditions such as high blood pressure, heart diseases and diabetes.

These and other health conditions might adversely affect you, that is why doctors recommend regular exercise, especially cardio.  

Find out the benefits of incorporating cardio into your fitness regimen, how it can improve your overall well-being and its effects on your mental health.

How Important is Cardio?

An article by Danielle Senador, PhD has shown that cardio increases your blood flow and lessens the chances of having a stroke. It also helps confidence and energy.

Cardio not only gives a better quality of life it also gives you an aesthetic look, cardio is an underrated abdominal exercise that stimulates your abs giving you that toned 6-pack abs.

There are numerous negative effects if you don’t exercise such as poor immunity, unmanageable weight and stress.

How Much Cardio Do You Need?

How often should you do cardio in order to reap the health benefits from it?

Stimulating your muscles and improving cardio needs progressive overloading to achieve this you must follow the recommended minutes in achieving muscle stimulation in cardio, which is 150 minutes of moderate-intensity.  

Try achieving  30 minutes of cardio five times a week if you want to raise your heart rate for the duration of the exercise. If you’re a beginner, try achieving 15 minutes of cardio five times a week to moderately stimulate your heart rate.

Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Cardio?

Everything we do needs to be in moderation. Our body can only manage certain levels of stress that are good for muscle growth, depending on our physical attributes, our body has different thresholds to withstand any physical exercise such as cardio.  

There is a point where doing too much cardio brings harm to our body.Instead of gaining the results you are seeking you’d then regress rather than progress. Some harmful effects of excessive cardio are:  

• Risk of injuries.
• Increase of tissue tear and low repair.
• Weakening of your immune system.
• Insomnia
• muscle fatigue.
• Can lead to being underweight.
• Can extremely lose muscle mass.

It's important to practice progressive overload, to where our bodies slowly adapt to higher repetition in our cardiovascular exercises and incorporate resting in between sets to let your body breathe and be ready for the next set.

To avoid overtraining, there is a specific range in which an exercise produces the best outcomes. It strikes a balance between exercise, sleep, rest, recuperation and diet. Finding this range requires some experimentation, and a professional trainer or coach can assist you with this. Along the way to your fitness journey you’ll learn to track your progress, make regular adjustments and improvements that fits your lifestyle.

How to make your cardio workouts fun

Cardio is a rigorous exercise that trains the resistance of your heart and the endurance of your lungs, it may seem tedious to do and due to this some are turned off in doing cardio because of its stigma of being grueling and repetitive.

There are tons of cardiovascular exercises ranging from jump rope, jogging, running, walking, treadmill etc. That is why you must find a cardiovascular exercise that fits your lifestyle where you’d do it everyday not because you need to, but because you love to.

Doing something you love would prevent you from feeling burnt out and this would encourage you to train without the feeling of repetitiveness on your chosen workout.

Prepare a healthy diet plan for better results  

Having a solid cardio routine is great, but if you combine it with a healthy diet plan the results would be faster. A healthy diet plan helps your body recover from your workouts. Your body needs a healthy diet so that it can work at its best.

MyFitnessPal helps with counting your macros and the nutrients you eat from various foods, this paired with the RENPHO Smart Scale to track your muscle gains and weight loss journey.  

Adopting a healthy diet will result in great changes. You will be able to live a comfortable and healthier lifestyle that you have always wanted. You'll be able to feel confident in your appearance, be healthy, and feel comfortable taking care of yourself.

An important component of a healthy diet is choosing foods that will benefit your body and help you live a healthy lifestyle.  

Learn to relax and rest

Cardio can be a strenuous exercise that after you’re done with it you need a rest in order for your muscles to recover, you can incorporate muscle massagers such as RENPHO’s Massage Gun to target specific muscle groups. This can help with deep tissue relaxation that will help you recover faster.

Always keep in mind that cardio can benefit you both mentally and physically. combined with a healthy diet, it can help you get the physique you've always desired.

With hardwork and persistence you can achieve greater cardio feats, always remember that we all have to start somewhere and it begins with you committing to a smart and healthy lifestyle.