You’ve heard that exercise is good for you, and that it will keep your heart healthy, help you live longer, look better, and feel better. But what type of exercise is the best? Actually there are two forms of exercise, aerobic and anaerobic. Both are essential to maintain overall health.
Aerobic exercise means making your heart and cardiovascular system work harder to get oxygen throughout the rest of your body. You can see if you are getting aerobic exercise by measuring your heart rate during an activity. To be an aerobic activity you’ll want your heart rate to be at 70-80% of your target heart rate. To find your target heart rate, just subtract your age from 220 for men and 226 for women.
For example a 30 year old man who is trying to get some aerobic exercise would want to keep his heart rate at 75% of 190 or about 143 beats per minute. You’ll want to keep doing your aerobic exercise for a minimum of 20 minutes on top of a five minute warm up and five minute cool down.
The benefits of aerobic exercise are numerous. This kind of exercise can help you keep your heart stronger, fight off heart disease, reduce cholesterol, control or prevent diabetes, lose weight, fight off viral illnesses, and more.
Types of aerobic exercises you can do include jogging, biking, swimming, or any number of cardio machines at your gym. Just be sure to monitor your heart rate to stay with your aerobic zone: 70-80% of your target heart rate.
Anaerobic exercise should also be a part of your exercise routine along with aerobic exercise. Whether you’re a bodybuilder or a beginner, anaerobic exercise is necessary for a healthy lifestyle. Where aerobic exercise uses oxygen and burns fat tissue, anaerobic exercise uses creatine sources in your body or lactic acid and builds muscle tissue.
The most common example of anaerobic exercise is resistance training, or lifting weights. Resistance training is more intense than aerobic exercise but takes place in shorter spurts with rests in between. This will help you build more muscle. Building muscle is important because having some muscle means your body will burn more fat naturally and keep you healthier. This doesn’t mean you have to be a body builder or look like one. Just adding a few pounds of lean muscle mass can make a difference.
Adding some muscle through anaerobic exercise can also help strengthen your bones and ligaments, help reduce your blood sugar and help improve athletic performance.