What Is Cardio And Why Should You Do It?
What is cardio? It’s as important to being healthy and looking good as lifting weights and does much more than just help you lose a couple of pounds! Here is a definition and ten reasons why you should cherish the idea of doing cardio.
What Is Cardio?
The word “cardio” is short for “cardiovascular,” a term used for the circulatory system consisting of the heart and blood vessels in your body.
What people refer to when saying they “do cardio” are endurance exercises that strengthen this network. Those are done for longer stretches of time, make the heart beat faster and pump more blood through your system, which carries nutrients and oxygen to every cell.
Any activity that gets your heart rate to about 50 – 75% of your maximum heart rate can be classified as cardio. You can roughly calculate your maximum with the formula 220 minus your age. If you are forty years old, for example, it’s 220 – 40 = 180.
Does it only work with specific fitness activities? No. As long as you get into the above range, it doesn’t matter what you do. Go for running, biking, dancing, tennis, skateboarding or whatever else you prefer.
But why would we deliberately choose to do this, make our hearts beat faster and get all sweaty and exhausted? There are ten good reasons:
1. Cardio helps you lose weight
Moving your body around burns more calories than just sitting in front of the television. And the faster you move, the more calories you burn. Think about it this way: If you want to lose weight and currently eat 3,000 kcal a day, you can accomplish shedding some pounds by either eating less or burning more calories.
Cardio also burns more calories than weightlifting, which consists of moving a weight for around 45 seconds and then taking a break for a minute – most of the time you spend weightlifting actually are those breaks.
Just don’t overestimate how many calories it takes care of. That’s the downfall of many a diet.
2. Your heart is a muscle
Especially weightlifters often don’t seem to realize this, but the heart is a muscle that needs exercise, too. If it doesn’t, it will get weaker like any other muscle.
Your heart, here shown with the lungs framing it, is essentially one huge muscle
Imagine your heart like a six-cylinder engine: when it’s brand new, all six are ready for you, just waiting to put out that big roar of power. Then, for the next twenty years, you drive that motor with just two of the six cylinders, because you want to save fuel. The other four never move. That is, until you decide that after all that time you want to crank that old baby up again. How do you think those four long-neglected cylinders will react?
3. A stronger circulatory system delivers more nutrients
When you do cardio, your body’s cells need more oxygen and nutrients. To keep up with this demand, it will strengthen the delivery system bringing it to them: the lungs get more capacity, the heart is able to pump more blood and the blood vessels are reinforced.
For your cells, this strengthened system means that they get more nutrients delivered all the time. Where before your cardiovascular network was like a maze of narrow side streets, it is now a bunch of wide lanes where no delivery trucks get stuck in.
4. Cardio’s stress means less stress
The other nice thing about this is that outside the times you actively do cardio, the whole system will actually have to work less: the average person has a heartbeat of around 80 – 90 bpm, a moderately active runner comes in at 60 – 70.
It is similar to a really narrow oil pipe, that has to run under full pressure to deliver 500 gallons / hour. A bigger pipe can deliver the same amount, but stay much below its maximum capacity, causing a lot less wear.
5. Cardio keeps your brain younger
A study done at Boston University examined how fit people’s brains were in relation to the fitness of their hearts. Its findings? People with weaker hearts had less brain volume than those of the same age whose hearts were stronger.
The weaker your heart, the less blood it is able to transport and the less blood is transported, the less oxygen and nutrients may get to your brain – it will age faster.
6. Cardio makes you a better thinker
Our brains benefit from this in another way as well: when we move, they have to process more information at once. You have to keep track of where you are going, what might be moving into your path, what that couple is doing over there on the lawn etc.
When overweight children were made to exercise, their math and thinking skills improved, without any special tutoring. Simply because their brains had learned to process more information.
7. Cardio can ease depression
Many people who suffer from serious depression have to take some serious drugs to keep it under control, but your body actually provides its own, when you let it: Running releases endorphins – hormones that enhance mood.
Cardio helps against depression
This can lower the amount of medications you have to take and therefore also limit the side effects many of these drugs come with.
8. Cardio can improve your sleep
About half of the world’s population suffers from sleep problems, either trying to fall asleep or the sleep’s quality. Here too, an ever-increasing amount of drugs is used to combat it, while just recently it was shown that obese persons taking sleeping pills have a higher risk of death.
Yet once more our bodies are able to help themselves: regular cardio improves the beneficial stage 3 and 4 slow wave sleep and can make you sleep longer and let you fall asleep more easily. Even people who suffered from chronic insomnia and did just some light cardio in the evening fell asleep 54% faster and slept 37% longer than other groups.
9. Cardio increases bone density
Especially women when they get older suffer from an illness called “osteoporosis,” a thinning of the bone tissue and loss of bone density. If you ever saw an older lady with a stooped over back, chances are you have seen a prime example of osteoporosis.
Together with strength training, cardio can increase your chances of preventing this from happening.
10. Cardio heightens your self-confidence
Many people who lead sedentary lives feel that their bodies are more of a vehicle than a part of themselves: unreliable and only grudgingly doing what it is supposed to. Working with your body, influencing how it feels, seeing it accomplish things you willingly set it out to do – these can entirely change your perspective.
Especially taken together with the other effects of cardio – the weight loss, the better sleep, the alleviation of depression – this can make an important difference to your self-confidence (PDF).
Ready To Tackle It?
Don’t think you have to run a marathon to benefit! It takes very little effort to (literally) start moving in the right direction! Here is a short and sweet guide on how you too can do it.
Pictures courtesy of “lululemon“, Wikimedia and “lululemon“.
27 Comments
Hey you plan on doing a video on this?? I’m pretty tired so I’m too lazy to read it right now lol but guess I will do so tomorrow anyway, looking forward to it! but pls, make a video ! 😀
This would be around 30 minutes long as a video 😀
Yeah probably, hehe. Anyway, just finished reading it, was definitely worth it GJ! Some good motivation right there, think I’ll hit the bike in a couple of minutes 😉 *
*And I do mean that !
Haha, cool! 🙂
And thanks for the kind words, man! 🙂
Thanks for commenting on my column!
I originally got into “cardio” (after running track in college) when I needed to train for the martial arts. It eventually became the foundation of my fitness program. I could support the behavior with plenty of data, but simply put, the people I know who do not do cardio, and are not young, do not look so good 🙂
Dr. J, that is a simple yet succinct way of putting it 🙂
Very nice, and motivating for those who are not doing cardio regularly
Thank you! I hope it helps! 🙂
this was helpful and quite mitivating. thank you from Nairobi Kenya.
Good to hear, Kerubo! All the best! 🙂
how can i do cardio in winter???
Here are some tips for running:
https://evilcyber.com/fitness/9-fabulous-tips-fall-winter-running/
I really need a better cardio its one of my weak points because when growing up I had ashtma but now its not so much there and I also heard cardio can help with asthma. So I run everyday after school. Its not much yet but I plan on running more and more. Thanks your an inspiration.
Hope it all goes great for you! Stay safe and sound! 🙂
I was a total cardio junkie! I rarely lifted weights. As a result, my body was pretty unbalanced and I hit a rut where I wasn’t losing weight (or toning) much. A running injury forced me to start lifting weights and now I LOVE it.
I think both are important. I also think the type of cardio you do matters. I’m a swimmer and getting that cardio fitness helped me to transition to running, hiking, biking…pretty much anything. Swimming had helped me learn how to breathe right!
Thankyou for such amazing para on cardio
thanks for the imformation . Easy to read ,understand text .
Hey so this is a weird question. I noticed that I’m losing breast fat while doing workouts. And some people said to stop cardio to prevent that. So is that what I’m supposed to do? Thanks
i am 16, and iam fat, i want to be slim and flexible please what do i do?
As a 16-year-old, you’re still growing so you need to eat properly. Don’t go on a diet. Just make sure to stop eating sweets. You can eat them once a week. Don’t drink soda. Water is the best drink you can get. Mix in a lot of vegetables with your food, and do cardio workouts, like jogging.
If you get hungry between meals, eat a fruit.
Oh, and to become flexible, stretch. There are a lot of stretch exercises that you can find on Youtube.
I have an issue with the word “cardio”. Cardio is simply your heart pumping blood oxygen and nutrients to the working body and cells. Therefore every single physical activity is actually cardio. The word cardio has caused the exercise and medical community to believe you need “X” minutes of cardio daily or weekly for heart health. This leads to people developing routines of prolonged running, elliptical, biking, etc. And they feel they NEED to get that in. Those activities can be about as limiting, and neglecting, as they are helpful. The fittest, strongest hearts, healthiest people in the world do not “Do Cardio” in the traditional sense. Traditional cardio can break the body down, and after as little as 15 minutes activities like running can become a muscle catabolic activity for the body that will neglect and diminish strength, balance, agility, power, mobility, speed, coordination, stamina, etc.
Getting stronger at your bodyweight can give you better “cardio”, but working on traditional cardio will not get you stronger and strength is the proven number 1 factor for human longevity, not aerobics. The stronger you are, and I don’t mean bigger, but purely stronger and denser, the less hard your heart will have to work which will in essence = better cardio and aerobic capacity.
Relative strength at a healthy lean bodyweight is what people should focus on, not “cardio”. Improve what you can lift, carry, in relation to your bodyweight. Improve your ability to push pull hold squat lunge and simply move through space in a variety of ways. That is what truly improves your body’s heart and work capacity. Simply watch a 5k or marathon or meet an aged runner or triathlete, so many damaged imbalanced weak individuals who should be working on other activities before they attempt to run long distances.
Jon, I could not agree more with the word “cardio” being used incorrectly or inappropriately. I much more prefer the word aerobic to describe this form of exercise. Yes, there is a difference. And to clarify, yes, people NEED to do aerobic exercise, just like they NEED resistance exercise. Just because something is #1, does not render the others unimportant. Different exercises have different benefits, just like food. If I just ate the #1 food, I would not be as heathy compared to a well balanced approach.
Aerobic exercise absolutely gets you stronger. It takes muscle development and conditioning. If it is detrimental, you are not doing it correctly. Same can be said for resistance training. So, how do you suppose people address Type 1 aerobic muscle fibers that are slow twitch, fatigue resistant, posture based, and fat burning tissue? It is done aerobically.
As far as meeting aged athletes…I’ve seen some pretty pre-mature aged and dead bodybuilders as well. Anything out of balance will manifest as oxidative stress. Thanks for the message. Advise with proper knowledge of what you are discouraging.
This is reaaly helpful thank you
This brings me to the question, What is the difference between aerobic exercise and cardio exercise?
They are the same thing.
Hey, i’m 16, skinny and trying to weight more… I did read on this website that cardio doesn’t “burn” muscles and that’s nice but if I’m trying to put on some weight in general, is that a good choice to do it 3 times a week like in the intermediate workout plan? or should I do other exercise?
I know some years have passed but thx for every reply 🙂