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‘Aerobic’ exercise refers to exercise that requires the consumption of substantially more oxygen than at rest. It is of a light to moderate intensity. Examples of aerobic exercise include walking, jogging, swimming or cycling at a steady pace. Another example would be dancing or ‘aerobics’ classes.
Regular exercise causes your body to make adjustments that result in improved health and physical functioning. Continuing with regular exercise enables your body to maintain these benefits.
We can categorised the benefits of aerobic exercise as either ‘fitness’ or ‘health’. These aerobic exercise will help you achieve both fitness and health.
Fitness — including increased cardiorespiratory fitness and endurance (stamina)……………..
Regular aerobic exercise improves your cardiovascular fitness by increasing your capacity to use oxygen. It does this by increasing your heart’s capacity to send blood (and hence oxygen) to the muscles. It means that your heart doesn’t have to beat as fast to deliver the same amount of blood. This is evident in a slower resting heart rate, and a slower heart rate for the same exercise intensity.
As you get ‘fitter’, particular activities (such as walking or jogging at a specified speed) will become easier.
You’ll also be able to undertake the activity for longer (known as endurance).. The same applies to activities such as cycling or swimming. It should be noted that fitness tends to be specific. So jogging will provide only limited benefits to your swimming fitness and vice versa. Your stamina will increase for the everyday activities of life, not just for exercise.
Other fitness improvements occur in the exercising muscles. Different mode of exercise are walking, running, cycling, or swimming etc..
Reduced risk of certain health problems
Regular aerobic exercise reduces the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, colon cancer and breast cancer. It can lower blood pressure and improve your blood cholesterol . It can also reduce anxiety, stress and depression, as well as instilling a general sense of well-being. Regular aerobic exercise increase your lifespan.
Low-impact aerobic exercise such as swimming is valuable for improving general health and fitness in people who have arthritis or other conditions that limit their ability to do weight-bearing exercise.
Fitness tends to be quite specific . We can achieve many health benefits from aerobic exercise. We can also achieve Health benefits from relatively moderate amounts of exercise.
Weight control
Aerobic exercise burns up energy (calories). Regular sessions of 30 to 60 minutes of low to moderate intensity aerobic exercise is important for weight loss or weight management programme.
However, many of the health benefits associated with aerobic exercise occur independently of weight loss. Evidence from large studies has shown that active, overweight people do not have a greater risk of many diseases than inactive people who are not overweight. From a health perspective, it is of course best to be both active and a healthy weight, but if weight reduction is a problem, it doesn’t mean that the exercise is having no benefit.
Improved bone and muscle health
Your risk of osteoporosis (excessive bone thinning as you age) can be reduced by regular weight-bearing aerobic exercise such as brisk walking.
By stimulating the growth of tiny blood vessels in your muscle tissues, aerobic exercise has also been shown to lessen the pain experienced by people who have fibromyalgia or chronic low back pain, as the oxygen supply to the muscles is improved and waste products are removed more efficiently.
Regular aerobic exercise can have social benefits too, whether you walk with a friend, play tennis with workmates, or form a social cycling team. Exercising with friends can also be the most effective way of ensuring that you do it regularly.
Aerobic exercise precautions
As with any form of exercise, be aware of over-exercising, either by doing aerobic exercise too hard, for too long or too often. This approach can lead to injury, and abandoning of your fitness programme. Remember to build up gradually from your current activity level, and not to progress too rapidly. If you are new to regular aerobic exercise, several weeks of low to moderate intensity aerobic exercise are usually advised before introducing more vigorous aerobic exercise sessions.
If you have existing health problems, are at high risk of cardiovascular disease, or have muscle, bone or joint injuries, check with your doctor before undertaking an aerobic exercise programme. Also, men aged over 40 years and women aged over 50 years who have not exercised regularly in the recent past should check with a doctor before undertaking a programme of vigorous physical activity.