AEROBIC MOVES

Aerobic exercise is a heart healthy way of improving and extending your life. Aerobics is an exercise that elevates your heart rate to a point that utilizes 70 to 80 percent of the capabilities of the heart.

It moves oxygen though the  blood steam and into the organs and muscles that improves endurance, reduces body fat and increases the health of the body. There are a countess number of aerobic moves that can be used and many more can be made up based on individual preference. 

Essentially, whatever raises the heart rate to the appropriate level and is sustained for a minimum of twelve minutes will do it; however below are some popular aerobic moves to get you started.  Before exercising you will need to warm up the muscles toavoid injury.

A few aerobic moves that will slowly raise your heart rate and begin to build energy includes: walking, marching or jogging in place, lunges and jumping jacks. Begin slowly and increase the speed as well as the stretch and work of the muscles throughout the warm up phase of your workout.

The entire warm up part of your aerobic workout should last five to ten minutes. The purpose of the warm up is to avoid injury and to raise the body’s core temperature and prepare the muscles and the joints for the training portion of the aerobic workout.

After the warm up part of the workout you will move into the training portion where you will reach and maintain your target heart rate. The intensity of the aerobic moves as well as the pace of the movement will grow. Many popular aerobic moves move the body either back and forth or up and back moves at a high intensity.

The classic gym moves that started at a particular line and then you raced to another line, bent and touched it, raced back to the beginning line and bent and touched it, turned and ran to a line that was past the first line…you get the idea. 

Quick movement of running back and forth while stopping to bend and straighten before taking off again will quickly elevate your heart rate!

Another popular aerobic training workout includes lifting the body by leaping, hopping or going up and down on an aerobic step with high intensity.

The entire training portion of the aerobic workout should last from fifteen to forty-five minutes with the intensity increasing to peak in the middle and then slowly decrease to the cool down portion of the session.

After the training portion of any workout you will want to include a cool down to the workout to slow the heart rate down and stretch the muscles so they do not stiffen up. Aerobic moves for the cool down include gentle stretches of all the muscles that were worked.

When stretching you should never bounce, but instead gently stretch and slowly press the stretch. The stretch should be comfortable and if it hurts stop! Remember to take care not to extend the loosened and lubricated joints to avoid injury.