Aerobic fitness is your body's ability to perform for a sustained amount of time while playing sports, walking up stairs, doing yard work, or any other physical activities. The more aerobically fit you are, the longer and harder you will be able to work without becoming fatigued. Improving your aerobic fitness will also help to keep you healthy by lowering blood pressure and cholesterol levels, improving heart function, and maintaining a healthy body weight.
Perform some type of cardiovascular exercise at least three days per week. Whether it's walking on the treadmill, running outdoors, or riding your bike, be sure to do it consistently each week for at least 20 minutes each time.
Gradually increase the intensity of your cardiovascular workouts by increasing time, frequency, and work load. In order to make improvements in aerobic fitness, you need to challenge the heart and lungs to use oxygen more efficiently. This is done by consistently increasing the work they must do, which causes them to adapt and perform better.
Crosstrain. If you are a runner, your body becomes used to the work it has to do while you are running and adapts to it, causing you to plateau when it comes to aerobic fitness. In order to keep improving your aerobic fitness, engage in a variety of cardiovascular pursuits that will cause the body to have to continually adapt and become more efficient at a wider range of activities. For example, if you are a cyclist, you might try rowing one day a week. Or, if you are an endurance runner, you might try doing bicycle sprints one day a week.
Do sprints at least one time a week. If you constantly train at a long, slow pace, your body will only be efficient and perform well at a long, slow pace. Just like crosstraining, sprints help to build more multifaceted aerobic fitness, allowing you to do longer and easier as well as shorter and more challenging amounts of work. You can train with sprints walking, running, swimming, and biking, because sprinting just means increasing the intensity for a short period of time to increase the heart rate and then slowing down to allow the heart rate to normalize. Try biking or running at a leisurely pace for five minutes at a time, but increase the intensity to your maximum ability every sixth minute. You can increase the frequency of your sprint minute as you become more aerobically fit.
Jody Braverman is a Seattle-based personal trainer, yoga instructor, and health and fitness writer. Contact her with comments or questions at JodyBraverman@gmail.com.
Added on 07/06/2010
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