There are many signs that you need to work on your cardiovascular endurance. It can be the feeling of tiredness after a short hike or struggling to jog around the block.
While you obviously do not want to be panting and struggling with even some simple exercise, working on your cardiovascular endurance is also great for your health and energy levels. Fortunately, there are different ways that can help you.
1. Pump Up Your Exercise
Obviously, if you are a couch potato, you can expect to struggle even with some simple exercise. Whatever your fitness level is, the first step to improve your cardiovascular endurance is to increase your routine or activity. This can be as simple as walking on a treadmill, jogging, or trying new classes at the gym.
There are also kinds of exercises that will do wonders for your cardiovascular endurance, like riding a bike, walking, running, jumping, and biking faster.
In fact, adults are recommended to do at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity sport or exercise of 75 minutes of more vigorous exercise1
If you really want to improve your cardiovascular endurance, you can double these goals and do 300 minutes of moderate exercise and 150 minutes of vigorous cardio exercise weekly.
2. Push Yourself Harder
If you find yourself not getting sweaty or even struggling in the gym, then it means your exercise regimen is too lax.
To help your heart and lungs become stronger, you will need to push yourself a little bit more. If the routine is too easy, your body does not even break a sweat and you will not reap any of the possible benefits.
Naturally, you will not need to push yourself too much too quickly. Instead, you want to add a little bit more to your routine so you get back to sweating and catching your breath.
You can either add to the miles you are walking or choose a more difficult route. You will not need to keep the moderate-intensity exercise the entire time, as long as you do try to go faster for a few minutes to challenge yourself. The added intensity is healthier for you as well.
3. Try Out Interval Training
This kind of training is perfect for busier mothers or individuals. Interval training means you do something extreme at the beginning, take a break then repeat. This kind of routine has been proven to be great at bringing your heart rate up.
Even researchers have discovered that those who have done 6 interval training sessions have drastically improved their endurance and aerobic capacity.
They have improved their sprint times and became tired much longer than before doing interval training. The best part is that you can do it on any equipment or even without one.
4. Do Circuit Training
Other than cardio exercise, circuit training can also work on your cardiovascular strength. In comparison to interval training, you will not have any rests in between.
You will also alternate between sets, so you can expect this training method to get you very tired.
When your cardiovascular endurance is improved, you can see a lot of benefits, the most striking of them is the strength that allows you to do more exercise. You will feel less tired and more energetic in the end.
Source
1. World Health Organization, Physical activity, 26 November 2020