Cardiovascular exercise is any exercise that temporarily gets your heart rate up. Cardio exercises are a popular way to accelerate weight loss, but their benefits go far beyond fat burning.
In this guide, we help you decide on the best way to do cardio at home for your specific health, fitness, and wellness goals. We discuss what cardio exercise is, what it can help you with, and some of our favorite exercise machines that make cardio easier and more effective.
Let’s start by understanding what cardio is in the first place.
What is Cardio Exactly?
Cardio exercise is any exercise that makes your heart beat at a significantly higher rate than your resting heart rate. Cardio exercise also increases your breathing rate, which is why it’s often called aerobic exercise.
When you exercise, your muscles consume energy to do work. This energy comes from carbohydrates and ketones in your blood. However, muscle cells need oxygen to break down these organic compounds and harvest their chemical energy. The carbon atoms in carbohydrates bond with oxygen to make carbon dioxide, while hydrogen atoms join with oxygen atoms to make water. This is why we breathe out carbon dioxide.
The aerobic catabolism reaction is quite similar to combustion, which is why it’s called calorie “burning”. As with combustion, your muscles need more oxygen to burn more calories per second. You start breathing quicker to get more oxygen, and your heart starts beating faster to supply more oxygen to your muscles. Both the respiratory and cardiovascular systems work together to ensure aerobic respiration.
Does that mean all exercise is cardio? Well, not exactly.
What isn’t Cardio?
Aerobic respiration isn’t the only kind of respiration. Your body can also make energy from sugar without using oxygen in anaerobic respiration.
Anaerobic respiration is far less efficient than aerobic respiration, which is why your body prefers aerobic respiration. It only resorts to anaerobic respiration when there isn’t enough oxygen. Anaerobic respiration also produces lactic acid as a byproduct which accumulates in your muscles to cause pain. This makes anaerobic respiration unsustainable for the body as a long-term energy source.
Most hypertrophy and muscle-growth exercises force the muscle cells to use anaerobic respiration. Even endurance exercises that use aerobic respiration don’t need enough oxygen to increase your heart rate. As a general rule, if an exercise is highly focused on a certain muscle group, causes pain after certain reps, and doesn’t make you breathe much faster, it’s not cardio.
But why care whether or not an exercise is cardio? Let’s look at some benefits that come with regular cardio exercise.
Goals Cardio Exercise Can Help You With
Lose Weight
Cardio exercise is an easy way to burn extra calories. Anaerobic exercise indeed burns calories much faster, but it also accumulates lactic acid in the muscles, which causes pain. Cardio exercise can be sustained for long periods without much discomfort.
Lose “Stubborn” Belly Fat
While you can lose fat in other areas of your body by creating a calorie deficit, belly fat is often hard to shake. Storing fat in your arms and legs is inefficient for the body. It costs energy to move your arms and legs if there’s fat stored there. Your belly is the most stable and least moved part of your body, so storing as much fat there as possible makes your body efficient.
This is unless you regularly jog. Your legs have to lift your body with every step while you’re jogging, so keeping fat stored around the belly isn’t as efficient for the body. This signals the body to burn this stubborn fat, and you start getting in shape.
For indoor cardio, we recommend the NordicTrack Commercial Series treadmill with a 30-day membership to iFit. It also has a 22″ touchscreen that keeps you engaged.
Lower Resting Heart Rate
A resting heart rate is a reliable indicator of cardiovascular fitness. It measures how hard your heart has to work to pump blood throughout your body. A resting heart rate lower than 60 BPM is considered healthy for adults, but athletes can even have a resting heart rate of 40 BPM.
Cardio exercise increases your heart rate acutely but lowers it chronically. Increased heart rate during cardio exercise makes your heart more efficient, so it’s able to pump more blood with each beat and doesn’t have to beat as fast when you’re resting. This can also lower your blood pressure, which is another indicator of good health.
Lower Risk of Heart Disease and Stroke
Heart disease is the biggest cause of death in the US, claiming the life of every one in 5 Americans. Two leading factors for heart disease are high blood pressure and high LDL cholesterol levels. Stroke has the same risk factors.
Cholesterol is a substance used in many processes in the body. Cholesterol exists in the body in two forms: low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol. If you eat a conventional American diet, high consumption of saturated and trans fats can raise your LDL cholesterol levels.
Even moderate cardio exercise can help lower LDL cholesterol and increase HDL cholesterol in the blood, protecting you against two of the deadliest age-related diseases.
Lower Risk of Type 2 Diabetes
Speaking of age-related diseases, cardio exercise also helps you prevent type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is now thought to be a disease of high insulin. When you consume simple carbs such as sugars, they quickly enter your blood to raise your glucose levels. The pancreas responds by releasing insulin to quickly store the glucose in the body. However, since simple carbs don’t have fiber, glucose levels decrease quickly while insulin stays high.
Over time, some cells get less responsive to insulin which signals the pancreas to produce even more insulin every time you eat. This insulin resistance is the driving feature of type 2 diabetes.
Cardio exercise can help prevent insulin resistance. Brisk walking on a treadmill after eating can significantly lower the amount of insulin produced, making your body more insulin sensitive over time.
Rewind The Aging Clock
Telomeres are structures that keep our chromosomes neatly packed in the cells. These structures shorten over time, which is thought to be a hallmark of aging.
Aerobic exercise has been shown to lengthen telomeres, making your cells actually younger. Aerobic exercise also activates Sirtuins, a group of genes shown to lengthen lifespans in mice and other model organisms. Cardio doesn’t just help prevent age-related diseases; it may even turn back the aging clock.
Our Favorite At-Home Cardio Exercise Machines
NordicTrack Commercial Series
The NordicTrack Commercial Series is an ideal treadmill for beginners. It has a 22″ HD touchscreen that allows you to stream workouts through the treadmill. The screen also has Bluetooth so that you can connect your headphones for better immersion.
The treadmill speed ranges from 0 to 12 MPH while the inclination goes from -3% to 15%. It keeps things challenging as you improve your cardiovascular health, so you stay motivated to exercise every day. This treadmill is also an Amazon’s Choice.
Niceday Elliptical Machine and Cross Trainer
As the name implies, the Niceday Elliptical Machine and Cross Trainer combines an elliptical with a cross trainer. You can use it as an elliptical to exercise your legs. As a cross trainer, it allows you to burn calories through your arm and leg muscles. Your cardio fitness limits your total cardio energy output. Still, using your entire body ensures your legs don’t use anaerobic respiration for energy, so you can exercise longer without hurting your legs.
This exercise machine has 16 levels of magnetic resistance to keep things challenging as you progress. It also has a digital monitor, so you stay in the loop about your stats.
Teeter Power10 Rower
The Teeter Power10 Rower is a rowing machine designed for cardio and strength. This machine also allows you to burn calories through your arms and legs, limiting muscle fatigue.
Featuring multi-grip handles to target different muscle groups, the Teeter Power10 Rower is designed for people who want to do cardio and build muscle. The machine has seven levels of magnetic resonance and a heart rate monitor to keep track of your cardio performance.
To Sum Up,
The NordicTrack Commercial Series is best for beginners as it keeps you engaged, Niceday Elliptical Machine and Cross Trainer is ideal for intense cardio without fatigue, and the Teeter Power10 Rower is perfect for people who want to build strength with cardio. Choose the one you like and start your fitness journey!
