You’ve undoubtedly heard of cardiovascular health before. But what exactly does it mean, what does it measure, and what are the practical effects we can experience?
Stick around because we’ll be going over everything you need to know on the topic.
What is Cardiovascular Health?
Cardiovascular health is a measure of how well your cardiovascular system works. The main job of the system is two-fold:
- To utilize and deliver oxygen and nutrients to all parts of the body.
- To clear metabolic waste from our muscles, allowing for recovery to occur.
Our cardiovascular system consists of the heart, blood vessels, and blood. The cardiorespiratory system consists of the same elements, including the airways and lungs, with which the blood vessels interact.
Maintaining and improving your cardiovascular health, often called aerobic capacity, is vital for your performance, recoverability, and long-term fitness growth. The fact is true for everyone, regardless of the goal, be it to bench press 200 kilos, sprint a sub-11-second 100 meters, or run a marathon.
What Does It Mean to Improve Our Cardiovascular Health?
Improving our cardio, aerobic capacity, endurance, or however you would like to phrase it, includes:
- Slight growth in heart size – the left ventricle wall becomes thicker, allowing more blood to enter the heart.
- Stroke volume improvement – refers to the heart’s improved ability to pump more blood with each beat.
- Resting heart rate drops thanks to the heart’s ability to pump more blood with each beat. The effect is also possible thanks to increased parasympathetic activation.
- Blood volume can increase in trained individuals, especially as a result of skeletal muscle hypertrophy.
- Airways open up, leading to improvements in breathing, even during intense exercise.
- Improved delivery of oxygen to working muscles, resulting in superior performance.
- An elevation in lactate threshold resulting in more lactate being removed before it can accumulate and lead to the deep burning sensation we are all familiar with.
- Improved ability to break down carbohydrates to produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP) molecules––the primary energy currency for all cells inside our body.
- Improved lung capacity thanks to the deep breathing trainees do during exercise.
It’s important to note that countless adaptations occur in response to aerobic exercise, some of which we might not know about yet.
How to Improve Your Cardiovascular Health
One of the most important things you need to do for better aerobic capacity is to exercise consistently. Playing sports, lifting weights, jogging in the park, sprinting, and riding a bike are fantastic options. Some modalities are better than others, but all forms of exercise rely on aerobic energy production. As such, any form of exercise can strengthen the cardiorespiratory system.
Aerobic exercise is excellent because the objective is to elevate your heart rate to a specific level (say, 60 or 70 per cent of your maximum heart rate) and keep it there for 20 to 60 minutes. But, according to research, even more, intense activities like weight training and sprinting boost your aerobic capacity.
Aside from exercising consistently, pushing for some form of progress is essential for preventing your body from adapting. By doing a bit more work overtime, your body is forced to adapt and improve further, resulting in ongoing progress.
Do you want extra help with improving your cardiovascular health? Book in a consultation with one of our personal trainers for advice on how you can achieve this goal. Visit our Enquire Now page to book this in.
