The cardiovascular system consists of the heart and blood vessels, being the veins, arteries and capillaries. The only way that you can keep the cardiovascular system in tip top health is through exercise. Exercise as you know will also help you to lose weight, as exercising will burn calories and also help raise your metabolic rate.
The benefits of cardiovascular fitness are to improve your blood circulation in the body, which is to pump the blood out to the outer extremities, namely your hands and feet. Your hands and feet suffer if you have poor blood circulation from feeling and being cold. Also a healthy cardiovascular system helps to carry oxygenated blood to your organs in your body especially when you are exercising.
Benefits of cardiovascular fitness
The whole cardiovascular is centered on the heart, the heart is a muscle which never tires, aren’t you pleased to know, but which needs to be kept strong. The heart is just like any other muscle in your body that it needs to be worked i.e. exercised to keep it strong. The fitter your heart is the least it has to work because the blood vessel linings remain flexible whereas as you age they can become hardened.
The other benefits of cardiovascular fitness is that a fit, strong heart can beat / pump slower but can still pump large volumes of blood around your body. A weaker heart needs to do much more work just to pump the same volume of blood around your body. It is found that athletes have a much lower resting heart rate because of the exercise that they do which promotes a fit cardiovascular system.
For yourself to benefit you can start with just walking briskly for 20 minutes per day, you need to get the heart beating faster so the faster you walk the better. Incorporating into your walk some inclines / hills will help to get your heart pumping, although the inclines do not have to be that steep for you to get the benefit. You could also try to tense your stomach muscles will you walk, to help strengthen those muscles as well.
You could otherwise try cycling, using a mini trampoline or swimming if you are not too keen on walking. It does not really matter what you do as long as you do something to get your heart pumping and so have the benefits of cardiovascular fitness.
