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Cardiovascular Exercise Safety Precautions
Cardiovascular exercise has received a lot of attention over the last 15 years as the centerpiece of physical fitness, weight management, and cardiorespiratory (heart and lung) health. This week, Chad explains the benefits of cardiovascular exercise and shows you how to make it a safe part of your routine.
The terms cardiovascular exercise, cardiorespiratory fitness, and aerobic exercise are all synonymous. This kind of exercise requires large muscle movement over a sustained period of time, elevating your heart rate to at least 50 percent of the maximum level. Examples include walking, jogging, biking, swimming, and any other repetitious activity that can be performed over an extended period of time.
Cardiovascular exercise has numerous benefits that combine to help lower your risk of cardiovascular disease by reducing risk factors such as obesity, hypertension, and high blood cholesterol. These benefits include: - decreased blood pressure
- increased HDL (good) cholesterol (high-density lipoproteins responsible for removing LDL (bad) cholesterol from the cells in the arteries and transporting it back to the liver for removal from the body)
- decreased LDL cholesterol
- decreased body fat
- decreased glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (this increases capillary density and blood flow to active muscles)
- increased heart and lung function and efficiency
- decreased anxiety, tension, and depression
Cardiovascular exercise serves as a foundation for daily living activities, sports, and other outdoor activities. Tennis, golf, skiing, dancing, basketball, volleyball, boxing, hiking, and strength-training programs all benefit from cardiovascular exercise. You'll enjoy them more as your stamina increases, your risk of injury decreases, and you experience less fatigue. There are, however, several precautions you should take to maximize cardiovascular exercise safety. Next: Post-Meal Exercise >
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