Cardiovascular endurance exercises are essential to keeping your heart healthy and strong. To learn how to improve cardiovascular endurance, and why it’s so important, read on — your friends at Jack City Fitness have the answers.
The term “cardiovascular endurance” gets thrown around a lot in athletic circles, but not everybody knows why it’s such a hot topic. The benefits of cardiovascular fitness are quite expansive. Cardiovascular endurance promotes overall strength gains and health improvement, and it is considered to be a crucial element to a good training regimen.
What Is Cardiovascular Fitness?
If you want to improve your cardiovascular endurance, it’s handy to actually know and understand what it is. Cardiovascular endurance or fitness refers to the state of your lungs, heart, and blood vessels. It also refers to how much you, as an athlete, are able to push your body without feeling tired. So, if you can run a mile, bike up a hill, or perform your favorite TikTok dance without exhaustion, your lungs, heart and blood vessels are likely functioning quite well, leading to high cardiovascular fitness levels. On the other hand, if running for the bus knocks you out for the morning, your cardiovascular endurance may be a bit low—but we’re here to help you work on that!
Why Is Cardiovascular Fitness Important?
Given the emphasis placed on the importance of cardiovascular endurance, you may be wondering what all the fuss is about. The truth is, having a well-functioning cardiovascular system boosts your athletic performance and your overall health. Some of the primary benefits of cardiovascular fitness include:
- It’s Good for Your Heart
As the name implies, cardiovascular fitness is central to the functioning of your ticker. Remember, the heart is a muscle, and there’s no better way to strengthen it than to spend long continuous bouts with it at an elevated rate. In fact, as you place more resistance and intensity on your heart, the more efficient it becomes. This will, in time, help lower your heart rate and promote better stroke volume as well as a higher capacity for work.
- It Can Benefit Your Hormonal Profile
Keeping your body under the stress of continuous cardio stress helps improve your hormonal profile by forcing adaptations to take place. This occurs through the release of endorphins and other necessary hormones to regulate your body’s ability to sustain the effort. As your body uses its hormones to accomplish the task, it adapts and figures out ways to be more efficient at using its resources.
- It Will Increase Your Daily Performance
The benefits of cardiovascular endurance make their way into many of your daily activities. After all, you don’t only actively move while you’re at the gym—you use your body all the time, whether you’re lifting things, commuting, or playing with your kids. Increasing your capacity to work can translate to many areas of your life!
Maintaining a healthy state of cardiovascular endurance simply makes living easier. With a healthy level of cardiovascular endurance, you will be able to perform a variety of activities to support your well-being, whether that’s kicking extra butt at the gym or having more time to play catch with your dog.
- It Will Give You Energy
When you have an increased sense of cardiovascular endurance, your body is able to handle increased activity.
Let’s say you work as a cook in a busy restaurant. You spend all day on your feet, running around and handling heavy equipment. When the end of the day hits, your body tends to feel exhausted…so you choose to head home rather than stop by that dinner party your friend is throwing. Once you start reaping the benefits of cardiovascular endurance, your body will likely feel less tired when you finish your shift, allowing you to try that ridiculous cake that your friend’s been working on all week.
Are There Certain Ways to Train for Better Cardiovascular Endurance?
Need a few pointers on the best way to train for cardiovascular endurance? We’ve got you covered.
- Don’t Forget to Warm-up
Most forms of cardio training put a lot of pressure and constant stress on the joints and muscles, so avoid getting injured by doing a good warm-up routine.
- Aim for 30-45 Minutes
Cardio training doesn’t need to last hours and hours to receive all the benefits. In fact, some forms of cardio, like high intensity interval training, rely on specifically short workout sets. In general, 30-45min of good constant training can do a world of good towards increasing your cardiovascular endurance.
- Eat Right
Always eat something within 30min of completing a cardio session lasting more than 20 minutes, preferably something with some carbs and protein. This is crucial for allowing your body and muscles to properly heal themselves post-workout. After all, you worked hard!
- Work With a Pro
Practicing cardiovascular endurance exercises will be an enormous benefit to any strength routine. Whether you’re new to cardio or simply hoping to improve, we always recommend working with a passionate professional. Under the direction of a qualified coach or in supportive classes, you can reap some serious benefits to improving your health and fitness.
Any Suggestions for a Routine That Promotes Cardiovascular Endurance?
There are plenty of routines that target the cardiovascular system and promote better endurance. As with most forms of exercise, the routine you choose will be personal and unique to your own skills and preferences. That being said, we think that the following routines are pretty solid — why not give one a try with a Jack City Fitness coach?
- Fartlek run (10 miles is ideal)
- Box hops (5×10)
- Squats (5×5)
- Bench Press (5×5)
- Superset with pull-up (5×5,6,7,8,10)
- Row machine (2x3min)
- Ab routine (30 min)
- Arms circuit (20 min)
At Jack City Fitness, we have everything you need to get fit and strengthen your cardiovascular endurance, no matter what your athletic history may be. Shoot us a message or call (208) 999-1111 to learn more about our partnership program. We’ll invite you to our gorgeous facility for a tour, free fitness consultation, and even a sneak peek at one of our famous classes. Once you sign up, you’ll have 24/7 gym access, a built-in relationship with our excellent staff of nutritional and fitness coaches and the ability to try digital training with our special fitness app. So let’s get moving—we can’t wait to see what you’re made of!