The Importance of Cardio

Happy Friday everybody, I hope you have some fun plans for the weekend. I talk a lot about cardio here so you may wonder what is so important about cardio, or even what cardio even is. Well I have been known to read minds, and I deliver, so here you go!

The body is a pretty cool thing, but like anything else if it is not kept fine-tuned it will begin to lose its luster. You may be asking: “But wise Sensei, what is the key to keeping my body fine tuned?” I would answer that the key… is cardio. About one out of every two billion people or so are going to live to be over the age of 110 years old, and you can bet these people are going to be the ones that are getting some sort of cardio exercise. It is likely you won’t live that long at all, maybe if you have above average luck and you take good care of yourself you can hit a hundred, maybe.

A great way to work out your cardio is by activating large muscle groups in your body. This is easily achieved by switching between multiple workouts, or you can just walk and that will cause you to use many different muscles, of which only a fraction of those will be used to actually lift your legs and create the motion.

Jogging, running, walking, all of these are extremely effective because the muscle groups are so massive. The largest muscles in your body are all in your legs, and working large muscles and large muscle groups is exactly what you want to do. Some people are confused as to why exercise is connected with the respiratory system. Now be careful, I’m about to drop some science on ya! Oxygen is one of the key components in a substance called ATP which we’ve talked about before.

To remind you, ATP is the actual substance that is energy, so without oxygen being fed to your muscles you would not be able to use any of the muscles you have no matter how big they are. The heart is responsible for sending oxygen throughout the blood to those muscles mentioned above, when the muscles need more oxygen there is an electronic pulse shot to the brain at a very high speed which then passes the signal to the heart which causes an increased heart rate to pump oxygen faster and harder.

Often you will feel light headed after a particularly good workout, this is because you have taken all the oxygen from the brain and it has been used for the muscles. If you want to start extending your life by way of exercise, it is not going to be the muscle building that will help you, but rather the cardio exercise.

So get on that treadmill and get your cardio pumping, heck maybe even run barefoot; it doesn’t matter how you get your cardio, just get it. Make sure you read some treadmill reviews before you buy though. Good luck with your cardio exercise! Maybe you can be the one in 2 billion that gets to 110 years old.