You don’t need any fancy equipment or a lot of space to do cardiovascular exercise; your own body weight is all you need to get a great cardio workout at home.
What is Cardio Exercise?
Cardiovascular exercise is any vigorous activity that gets your heart rate up and makes you breathe harder while using large muscle groups of the body repetitively and rhythmically.
The such activity progressively challenges your most vital internal body organs and improves the function and performance of the heart, lungs, and circulatory systems.
Cardio has many benefits for overall health, including heart health, mental health, mood, sleep, weight regulation, and metabolism.
Cardio is a high level of weight loss exercise, that also builds your abs and oblique muscles (that everyone loves to have).
Before and after workout cardio is the best option for warm-up or cooling down your body. Warm-up is very essential to start a workout, where you can do dynamic stretch, cardio, and lightweight or bodyweight exercises.
Benefits of the Cardio Exercises
The American College of Sports Medicine recommends people engage in 150–300 minutes of moderate physical activity a week and below are the benefits that affect your entire body:
- Increases blood flow and decreases the chances of stroke.
- Improves memory and thinking ability.
- Combats decline in brain functioning with age.
- Helps protect against developing Alzheimer’s disease.
- Increase circulation, which leads to clearer, healthier skin.
- With a heart-healthy nutrition plan, safe weight loss comes with doing regular cardio exercise.
- Staying active help improves blood sugar control, decreases stress on this vital organ, and reduces your chance of developing type 2 diabetes.
- Our moods fluctuate on a daily basis but staying active helps boost your mood.
- Improve sleep quality and activeness throughout the day.
- Cardiovascular exercise helps you to maintain high blood pressure.
- A cardio workout is enough to burn the maximum calories in our body. 30 minutes of workout can burn up to 290-355 calories every day in the body.
Beginner move
If you’re new to cardio, these moves will help get you up to speed.
1. Standing Obliques Crunch
How to do Standing Obliques Crunch?
- Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart.
- Raises your hand and place it on the back of the head.
- Cross both your hand’s fingers together and your elbows pointing outward. This position is your starting position.
- Now tuck your right side, move your right elbow down and right knee up.
- When both come together return to the starting position. Repeat on the left side.
Why Standing Obliques Crunch: This is the best low-impact and ideal for beginner cardio exercises that target your side of the belly and helps to burn fat very fast. This exercise is a perfect option for beginners or obese people who struggle to do HITT cardio exercises.
2. Lateral shuffles
How to do Lateral Shuffles?
- Come with your feet hip-width apart, knees and hips bent slightly.
- Lean forward a lit bit and engage the core.
- Start with the right foot moving right and left foot following.
- Shuffle right for four right-left steps, then move left for four left-right steps.
- Continue shuffling right and left for the desired amount of time.
Why Lateral Shuffles: The Lateral Shuffle is great for toning your calves, hamstrings, quads, hip flexors, and glutes. Not to mention, it helps improve your coordination and agility – which comes in handy for those quick side-to-side movements. This move is commonly used by tennis, soccer, and basketball players but can really benefit anyone!
3. Jumping Jacks
How to do Jumping Jacks?
- Stand straight and your arms at your sides.
- Now jump and spread your legs wider than your shoulder width at the same also lift your arms overhead.
- At the same momentum, again jump and go to the starting position and repeat it same without pause.
Why Jumping Jack: Jumping jack exercise is a cardio workout that works on the heart and other muscles like the glutes, quadriceps, and hips. It also put a little bit of effect on your shoulder, abs, and obliques.
4. High Knees
How to do High Knees?
- Stand with your legs together and arms at your sides.
- Lift one knee toward your chest. Lower your leg and repeat with the other knee.
- Continue alternating knees, pumping your arms up and down.
Why High Knees: High Knees are a cardio-intensive exercise that is performed quickly and requires the engagement of your core muscles. Strengthening all the muscles in your legs, getting your heart rate up, and improving coordination and flexibility are benefits of this exercise.
5. Butt kicks
How to do Butt Kicks?
- Stand with your legs together and arms at your sides.
- Bring one heel toward your butt. Lower your foot and repeat with the other heel.
- Continue alternating your heels and pumping your arms.
Why Butt Kicks: Butt kicks are a type of jump training exercise that uses your own body weight as resistance to improve muscle strength and endurance. These exercises are powerful aerobic exercises that work your cardiovascular system by repeatedly jumping and landing on your toes.
Intermediates Moves
As you build endurance and strength, progress to these intermediate moves.
1. Squat Jump
How to do Squat Jump?
Stand with the feet hip-width apart by putting your hands at chest level and bending your keens to lower onto the squat. When your hips go on your knees level, push the body up and jump in the air by swinging your arm back and by extending your hips forward. Land gently back in a squat and repeat.
Why Squats Jump: Squat jumps are a powerful, plyometric exercise that strengthens your entire lower body and increases your heart rate for a significant calorie burn. Squat Jumps target quadriceps, glutes, hamstrings, and calves.
2. Jump Rope
How to do a Jump Rope?
Jumping rope is high impact and requires practice to do. It looks easy, but starters may pay some difficulties to do. For the best results, turn the rope with the wrists, and land softly. Only jump high enough to clear the rope.
Why Jump Rope: Jump Rope is the best cardio exercise to pump your heart fast at home which includes burning calories, better coordination, stronger bones, and improved heart health.
Related: How to do jump rope, step by step?
3. Mountain Climber
How to do it?
Start on a high plank with your hands directly under your shoulders. Bring one knee toward your chest by another one straight. Alternate, bring the opposite knee forward with the same action at a time, while when you put the first knee back to the same position.
Tip: Keep your core, butt, and quads engaged to avoid rocking your hips.
Why Mountain Climber: Mountain climbers work several different muscles including the shoulders, hamstrings, core, triceps, and quads. It is also the best workout to develop your overall fitness and makes you shapely and slim.
4. Plank Jack
How to do Plank Jacks?
Start in a plank position with your elbows under your shoulder. The body should be straight from head to heels. Bring your feet together and immediately jump and spread your legs wider than shoulder-width. At the same pace jump back to a starting position and repeat it until your targeted reps are not completed.
Why Plank Jacks: Plank jacks are combined with cardio and core-strengthening exercises. They can help you strengthen the muscles of both the upper and lower body.
5. Running
This is the best cardio exercise who suffer from diseases like blood pressure, diabetes, arteriosclerosis disease, obesity and etc. It improves your heart health rate and metabolic rate which improves your fitness very fast. It is the best cardio exercise to burn an unlimited of calories that kill unwanted fat.
Note: Here running doesn’t mean your full speed, it is a pace above your normal walk then it can show you effective results. It is just between your running speed or walking speed.
6. Standing Alternating Toe Touches
How to do Standing Alternating Toe Touches?
- Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and arms at your sides. Brace your core.
- Lift your right leg straight up. Simultaneously raise your left hand up and over, reaching toward your right toes.
- Repeat with your left leg and right hand.
Why this movement: It targets the abs and to a lesser degree also targets the hip flexors, quads, and obliques making it a great full-body cardio move.
Advance Move
When you’re ready for a challenge, try these advanced cardio moves. Each exercise involves greater coordination and multiple body movements.
1. “Screamer” Lunges
How to do Screamer Lunges?
Stand with the feet hip-width apart. Extend the right leg back to a lunge position. Push off with the right foot to lift the right bended knee to hip height while your left leg is extended straight when you are jumping in the air. Return the right foot to the starting position and repeat it until 10 reps are completed on one side. Then switch to another one.
Why Screamer Lunges: Screamer lunges help to strengthen your lower body, including your: Quadriceps, Hamstrings, Glutes, and Calves. It also improves your heart health.
2. Burpees
How to do Burpees?
Stand with feet hip-width apart and engage your core. Jump up, then immediately drop your hands to the floor and shooting feet back so you’re in a high plank position. Then do one push-up and quickly jump to feet back to hands without any pause, stand, and jump up again in one movement. This is your one burpee, now complete your desired reps without any pause.
Why Burpees: Burpees are an advanced level of cardio workout that boosts your cardio fitness and burns unwelcome fat from your body. It is also the best exercise for heart health.
3. Plank ski hops
How to do Plank Ski Hops?
- Start in a plank with your hands under your shoulders and your body straight. Bring your legs together.
- Jump your feet to the right, rotating to bring your knees outside your right elbow. Keep your legs together.
- Jump back into a plank. Repeat on the left side.
Why Plank Ski Hops: Plank ski hops, also called plank skiers, are a challenging and endurance-testing exercise that combines planks and rotational jumps. The turning movement of the jump will test your strength, so make sure you’re up for the challenge before you attempt it!
4. Swimming
Swimming is a low-impact cardio exercise that improves your muscle strength, blood flow, tidal volume, and heart capacity. It burns a lot of calories that make you fit and helps to produce unwelcome fat in the body. 30 minutes of swimming can burns 300 calories.
Related: How to swim?
5. Stationary bicycling
The last one is stationary bicycling, it is an exercise that increases your heart rate and burns a lot of calories. Set high-intensity to vigorous-intensity cycling that gives better results.
Summary
In simple terms, cardio exercise is a movement that increases your heart rate and maintains your fitness. You can do cardio at home for abs and obliques and also for warm-ups before the workout starts.
Cardio also plays an essential role in obese people who have lots of fat. Cardio helps to reduce unsaturated fat and fat that lies under the skin or also belly fat. It also avoids producing obesity again in your body.
For an excellent exercise program, target to do 5 moves of cardio that includes 3 or 4 sets with 12-14 reps. If you have some questions about the above article you can comment to us, without hesitation.
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