Cardio exercise is any exercise that raises your heart rate. The body is designed to move and to keep your muscles in shape, you really need to work them. A stronger cardio-vascular system means more capillaries delivering more oxygen to cells in your muscles.
This enables your cells to burn more fat during both exercise and inactivity. Cardio exercise uses large muscle movement over a sustained period of time, keeping your heart rate to at least 50% of its maximum level.
1. Boxing
Just try hitting a heavy bag for a few minutes and you’ll quickly see why boxing counts as cardio. With boxing, you’re constantly shuffling, twisting, keeping your arms up at a high level and using a lot of speed and coordination to punch.
If you’re at home without a heavy bag to take it out on, pick up some light weights and shadow box. We all can’t be Rocky Balboa, but anyone can use boxing to get healthy. Just 30 minutes of boxing can help you burn up to 400 calories.
2. Jumping jacks
Jumping jacks don’t require any equipment, you can do them anywhere and they are easy and are done in elementary school gyms. Do them the standard way, arms going overhead or cross your arms over your chest to improve shoulder flexibility. It gets the upper body involved as well as lower body.
3. Jump rope
Go get yourself a jump rope today. This form of cardio can be done just about anywhere. Turn up your favorite playlist and jump to the beat. Tossing your jump rope in a backpack, suitcase or purse will help you squeeze in your 150 minutes of exercise per week, whenever you have some spare time.
Image Courtesy by: media.self.com, assets.com
