Great Cardio Workouts At Home
When taking a trip to the gym you expect to have a large variety of options to choose from for your cardiovascular exercise needs.
However when you workout at home you usually have significantly less options.
It seems discouraging but all you really need is some motivation and imagination.
Before I get into some specific examples of them, I want to talk a little bit about what Cardio Workouts actually are.
Cardiovascular exercise, or cardio for short, is technically any type of exercise that engages the muscles of the heart.
To one degree or another this is any kind of exercise.
Typically when we use the term "cardio" we are referring to aerobic exercise which is any form of exercise that raises your heart rate slightly above average for a slightly prolonged period of time.
It also means that the exercise is performed with oxygen as opposed to anaerobic exercise that doesn't use oxygen during the performance of the event.
What I am trying to say is that all aerobic workouts are cardio workouts but not all cardio workouts are aerobic workouts.
There are other types.
The most simple and basic type of cardio workout is to go on a run, but that can be done in a variety of ways just by itself.
Throughout my experience I've frequently been confused with all of the options there are.
As a kid in middle school I would dread the day that we would have to run the mile for time in P.
E.
class.
Fortunately as I got older and started working out more running became much easier.
Strength training went along way to helping me lose weight so that I could run better.
My point is exercising all of the muscles including the heart and lungs is necessary if we are to be at our healthiest.
If you choose to start a running program then start out slow.
Either with a 1 mile run or a something like a 10 minute run.
Once you get in a little better shape you can run intervals: one minute sprinting, and one minute of jogging or walking.
When starting intervals a total of six minutes, or 3 intervals, with these will workout great.
If for whatever reason you don't run, then I have a another cardio workout to share with you.
This one starts out with jumping lunges.
Do these just like normal lunges except when you explode back up switch your back leg to the front and vise versa.
Do 10 of those followed by 5 pullups or 10 barbell rows with some light dumbbells.
After that perform 20 standing knee tucks switching from right knee to left, and curling your knee up to your torso as far as you can.
Follow that with 10 pushups, and about 1 minute of jumping rope.
If you don't have a jump rope then just pretend that you do, or if you don't want to look foolish there's always jumping jacks.
Repeat that whole circuit for a total of 3-5 times.
The goal at the end is to have an elevated heart rate as opposed to exhausted muscles, but there's a good chance you'll get that too.
However when you workout at home you usually have significantly less options.
It seems discouraging but all you really need is some motivation and imagination.
Before I get into some specific examples of them, I want to talk a little bit about what Cardio Workouts actually are.
Cardiovascular exercise, or cardio for short, is technically any type of exercise that engages the muscles of the heart.
To one degree or another this is any kind of exercise.
Typically when we use the term "cardio" we are referring to aerobic exercise which is any form of exercise that raises your heart rate slightly above average for a slightly prolonged period of time.
It also means that the exercise is performed with oxygen as opposed to anaerobic exercise that doesn't use oxygen during the performance of the event.
What I am trying to say is that all aerobic workouts are cardio workouts but not all cardio workouts are aerobic workouts.
There are other types.
The most simple and basic type of cardio workout is to go on a run, but that can be done in a variety of ways just by itself.
Throughout my experience I've frequently been confused with all of the options there are.
As a kid in middle school I would dread the day that we would have to run the mile for time in P.
E.
class.
Fortunately as I got older and started working out more running became much easier.
Strength training went along way to helping me lose weight so that I could run better.
My point is exercising all of the muscles including the heart and lungs is necessary if we are to be at our healthiest.
If you choose to start a running program then start out slow.
Either with a 1 mile run or a something like a 10 minute run.
Once you get in a little better shape you can run intervals: one minute sprinting, and one minute of jogging or walking.
When starting intervals a total of six minutes, or 3 intervals, with these will workout great.
If for whatever reason you don't run, then I have a another cardio workout to share with you.
This one starts out with jumping lunges.
Do these just like normal lunges except when you explode back up switch your back leg to the front and vise versa.
Do 10 of those followed by 5 pullups or 10 barbell rows with some light dumbbells.
After that perform 20 standing knee tucks switching from right knee to left, and curling your knee up to your torso as far as you can.
Follow that with 10 pushups, and about 1 minute of jumping rope.
If you don't have a jump rope then just pretend that you do, or if you don't want to look foolish there's always jumping jacks.
Repeat that whole circuit for a total of 3-5 times.
The goal at the end is to have an elevated heart rate as opposed to exhausted muscles, but there's a good chance you'll get that too.
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