The primary advantages of cardiovascular exercise - strengthen your heart and lungs and burn body fat!

When I suggest physical activity I do not necessarily mean formal exercises in a gym or fitness club setting. I refer to any activity that gets you moving and pushes your body outside of its usual sedentary or rested state. This is a principle described as OVERLOAD. You overload a muscle when you encourage it to work harder than it normally would and this also applies to your heart muscle!

I am not going to overwhelm you with all the theory behind why you should exercise, but I am sure that you are reading this because you want to enhance your health. Health and vitality starts with your capacity and committment to use and improve your physical body.

I am sure that there will still be individuals reviewing this, thinking that they don't have time to exercise, or don't really believe that they need to, but this is likely to be because a part of the brain is trying to hinder their efforts to improve themselves! This is the same part of the brain that tells you that your diet can wait until Monday, or that one more piece of chocolate wont hurt! We all have coping mechanisms of some sort and look to rationalise decisions we make, even though we know through basic logic that what we are saying to ourselves isn't always the case! The trick is to learn to realise when you are making excuses and to learn to overcome the voice of negativity! This is a hugely important element to making positive changes in any area of your life.

So let me just outline 3 areas to consider for your own personal fitness plan. You must include cardiovascular exercise (elevating your heart rate), muscular exercise (strengthening and toning your muscles) and flexibility exercises (improving your posture and range of motion around your joints). Each of these areas are just as important and should be included in your exercise routine.

Cardiovascular Exercise

In this article I will be detailing cardiovascular exercise. Cardiovascular exercise is important for a number of reasons: Firstly, it improves the efficiency of your heart and lungs and enables your body to take in and circulate larger amounts of oxygen. If your body is able to take in and pump more oxygen then you are less likely to get out of breath so easily. You will be able to continue exercising for longer periods of time and your heart and lungs will generally be healthier. This is described as cardiovascular fitness.

If we look past the obvious then there are more benefits to training at higher intensities. If we use a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is too easy and 10 is almost impossible then you should try to exercise at a minimum of 7. At 7 it should be hard and you will sweat, but you should be able to maintain the level of difficulty for at least 20 minutes. When you exercise at this intensity, changes begin to take place in your body. Your body creates more mitochondria in the muscles and the mitochondria are responsible for absorbing oxygen. To cut a long story short, your body can only burn fat in the presence of oxygen, so the higher your body's capability to use oxygen, the greater your ability to burn fat!

There is another school of thought that says you should exercise at an intensity of 6 out of 10, as this is the 'fat burning zone'. Let me just explain something: you DO NOT burn more fat working at a level of 6 out of 10 than you do at an intensity of 7 out of 10! PERIOD! However, if you cannot maintain at least 20 minutes at greater intensity then you should reduce your intensity to achieve the full amount of time. In my opinion this is the only time you should exercise at a lower intensity (other than warm ups and cool downs). Working at 6 out of 10 will NOT encourage your body to undergo change and become a fat burning machine!

That said, only work up to greater difficulties as your fitness improves. You should be in this for the long haul, so don't burn out in the first couple of days! Start with what you are comfortable doing and aim to develop over time. Also, seek guidance from your doctor if you have any health conditions or concerns.

In my next post, I will be detailing a method for managing and improving your cardiovascular exercise and fitness. This will provide a workable guide for any individual who is ready to begin exercising TODAY, or who has been exercising and wishes to develop further.

Please note that when you exercise your body uses more oxygen and as a waste product more free radicals are produced within your body. Free radicals are volatile molecules, which attack and damage healthy cells in a process called oxidation (or free-radical damage). It is widely believed that we must ensure that we take in sufficient quantities of antioxidants (i.e. vitamins) to eliminate free radicals and protect our bodies against degenerative diseases.

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