What to Know About Cardiorespiratory Endurance
One of the biggest indications of someone's overall health, cardiorespiratory endurance, also known as cardiovascular fitness, is an indicator used most commonly to assess the state of someone's wellbeing.
It measures this by looking at how well your muscles, heart and lungs hold up and perform when engaged in long periods of moderate to intense physical activity and for how long you are able to go without getting winded.
By increasing your cardiorespiratory endurance, you can also increase the levels of oxygen in the heart and the lungs, in turn, helping you enjoy longer periods of physical activity.
What is Cardiorespiratory Endurance?
In short, cardiorespiratory endurance measures how well your body is able to perform during a long period of physical activity such as exercise. Someone with high cardiovascular fitness is able to sustain periods of high-intensity exercise for an extended stretch of time without running out of breath.
Over time, you can build up your own cardiorespiratory endurance just by changing your habits a little and incorporating exercise more regularly into your routine.
So how long does it take to increase cardio endurance? In one study, a 12-week training program in overweight students helped to increase their cardiovascular fitness.
Those who went through with the training program showed an improvement in muscle strength, exercise endurance and body mass index. This suggests that with just small adjustments to your usual routine, you could be on your way to improving upon this aspect of your health.
How to Increase Your Cardio Endurance
The best way to improve upon your cardiorespiratory endurance is simply to exercise regularly. Studies have shown that endurance training, resistance training and HIIT are all excellent ways to improve upon not only that endurance but also the strength of your muscles.
Just as it can be an overall indicator of your physical health, having a good level of cardio endurance can also provide benefits to the whole body, and that can be as simple to attain as incorporating more activity into your day.
Quick Fact: Statistics on running related vary, but between 30-75% of active runners are hurt annually. According to these researchers a wide vary of reasons explain why runner acquire such a high amount of injuries each year.
Ironically enough, some of the reasons stem from:
Running shoes
Stretching
Running frequency
Weight
Biomechanical misalignment
Muscle imbalance.
From our team’s research and personal experience, we found percussive therapy devices to be helpful when it came to preventative measures to avoid injury.
Exercises That Improve Upon Cardio Endurance
Cardiovascular endurance is something that is achieved over time and can sometimes be a slow process, especially if you lead a sedentary lifestyle. There are a few exercises that are thought to help you achieve that goal sooner, and some of those are as follows.
Side shuffle touches
Mountain climbers, otherwise known as running planks
Burpees
Jumping jacks
Swimming
Running
Jogging
Brisk/power walking
Dancing
Jump roping
High-intensity sports such as soccer and basketball
Final Thoughts
In all, cardiorespiratory endurance is the measure of how well a person is able to endure long periods of physical activity, taking into account factors such as how well the muscles, lungs and heart all perform with high-intensity physical activity.
