Aerobic Exercise Can Save Your LifeWhat is aerobic exercise? How is it different from other training? Any physical activity that you can perform for more than a few minutes that taxes your lungs, heart and muscles can be considered an aerobic activity. It differs from other training in tempo and duration: if you really think about it, any exercise can be aerobic if it's done at the right tempo and for long enough. When it comes to aerobic exercise, blood and oxygen are key. Aerobic training helps the heart transport more blood, oxygen, and nutrients and increases stroke volume (the amount of blood the left ventricle ejects per pump) to the muscles, organs and tissues. It does this by increasing the capacity of the hearts chambers, namely the left ventricle, to hold more blood. At rest a typical male's stroke volume will average around 70 milliliters, but as you become more fit the ventricles will become larger and able to hold more blood. Now, the more blood your chambers are able to store, the more blood, oxygen and nutrients will go to - that's right- the muscles, organs and tissues. Starting to make sense?
The great thing about focusing on aerobic exercise and cardiovascular fitness is that you can really make huge gains no matter who you are. You can literally go from couch potato to athlete. This is different from speed training, body building, and to a certain extent, strength training, where having good genes to start with plays a significant role. The word aerobic means "with oxygen", anaerobic "without oxygen" and the more oxygen you use the more fat you burn! How? Carbohydrates and fats are the fuel that our muscles use. The difference between the two is that fat has 9 calories per gram and carbohydrates have 4, so you get more energy from a gram of fat than a gram of carbohydrate. Like I said earlier, the good news is that your body can become more efficient at using oxygen and burning fat, which is great for your waist line! Here are some of the benefits of this type of exercise: • Lower Resting Heart Rate- The better your physical fitness the lower your resting heart rate will be. An average heart rate at rest is around 72bpm (beats per minute). • Stroke Volume-Increasing the amount of blood that your heart can pump in one contraction. • Weight Control- Sure, you can lose weight without exercise by reducing the amount of food you stuff in your face and thereby reduce your caloric intake enough so that you burn more calories than you consume, but it takes a regular exercise to keep your weight off. How much exercise should you get? You’ll need around 30-45 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity at least 3 times a week or more if you can manage to fit it into your schedule. • Cognitive Function- There have been studies done that show individuals performing better on cognitive function tests after aerobic exercise than those who didn't exercise. • Cardiovascular Disease- There’s so much research in favour of exercise on this topic that it would take many pages, and then some, to cover it all. In a nutshell, less fit individuals have much higher rates of cardiovascular disease than fit individuals—in some cases, the risk was twice as high. The proof is in the pudding! Aerobic exercise works in many ways to prevent heart disease; two of the most important ways are by reducing blood pressure and allowing blood vessels to be more compliant (more compliant means that they become less stiff, and it's less likely for fat to accumulate and clog up the vessels). Results like these have been proven over and over again. These are just a few examples of how aerobic exercise can help you. I don't want to sound like a broken record, but you have to understand that to dramatically improve the hearts efficiency you have to exercise it often: 30-45 minutes, 2-3 times per week minimum.
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