April 29th, 2022 | 2 min. read
The CDC recommends about 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week. That includes aerobic exercise. If you break it down, it can be five days of 30 minutes of aerobic exercise or three days of 50 minutes of aerobic exercise, for example.
They also say that you could get 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise per week, or a combination of moderate to vigorous. So why are aerobic exercises beneficial? What are some examples of aerobic exercises? Watch the video or read on for more.
Aerobic exercise has a multitude of benefits, such as lowering your blood pressure; reducing stress; strengthening your heart muscles; improving your mood; decreasing your risk for depression or anxiety; and better sleep, balance, and joint flexibility.
And, of course, it helps you maintain a healthy BMI and body fat percentage.
First, we have the very traditional ones that you can think of off the top of your head, like walking, running, cycling, and swimming. Lots of prolonged activity.
You can also do some sort of HIIT training, high-intensity interval training, or circuit training, where your heart rate gets way up, you take rest breaks, it goes back down, way up, and you do intervals like that.
And then also sports qualify as aerobic activities. So think soccer, tennis, pickleball, basketball, and things like that.
A combination of all of these is going to be the most beneficial because you're challenging your heart in multiple ways.
You're not just getting out and walking for three miles a day every day. And then sooner or later your heart's going to get used to it, and then you're not challenging it anymore. If you mix some walking in with some interval training, some circuit training, that's better.
Even on your walks, if you pick up the pace for five minutes and then back off one or two minutes and kind of repeat those intervals, that's a fun way to mix it up.
With sports, where you're constantly engaged, you're mentally engaged, and you're challenging your body to do short sprints and back off for a little bit, but you're constantly moving, those are going to be very, very beneficial.
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