cardiovascular exercise principles and guidelines: Part One & Two

For maximum effectiveness and safety, cardiovascular exercise has specific instructions on the frequency, duration, and intensity. These are the three important components of cardiovascular exercise that you really need to understand and implement in your program. In addition, your cardiovascular program should include a warm-up, a cool-down, and stretching of the primary muscles used in the exercise. This article is part one of a two part series discussing the very important principles and guidelines of a safe and effective cardiovascular exercise program. Part one will explain the proper methods of warming-up, stretching, and cooling-down and discuss the frequency and duration of a sound cardiovascular routine. Part two will discuss how to monitor exercise intensity and heart zone training.


Warming Up and Stretching
One very common mistake is stretching before muscles are warmed-up. It is important to stretch after your muscles are warm (after blood has circulated through them). Never stretch a cold muscle. First warm up. A warm-up should be done for at least 5-10 minutes at a low intensity. Usually, the warm-up is done by doing the same activity as the cardiovascular workout but at an intensity of 50-60% of maximum heart rate (max HR). After you've warmed-up for 5-10 minutes at a relatively low intensity, your muscles should be warm. To prevent injury and to improve your performance, you should stretch the primary muscles used in the warm up before proceeding to the cardiovascular exercise.


Cooling Down
The cool down is similar to the warm-up in that it should last 5-10 minutes and be done at a low intensity (50-60% of max HR). After you have completed your cardiovascular exercise and cooled-down properly, it is now important that you stretch the primary muscles being used. Warming-up, stretching, and cooling-down are very important to every exercise session. They not only help your performance levels and produce better results, they also drastically decrease your risk of injury.


Frequency of Exercise
The first component of cardiovascular exercise is frequency of the exercise, which refers to the number of exercise sessions per week. To improve both cardiovascular fitness and to decrease body fat or maintain body fat at optimum levels, you should exercise (cardiovascularly) at least three days a week. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends three to five days a week for most cardiovascular programs. Those of you who are very out of shape and/or who are overweight and doing weight-bearing cardiovascular exercise such as an aerobics class or jogging, might want to have at least 36 to 48 hours of rest between workouts to prevent an injury and to promote adequate bone and joint stress recovery.


Duration of Exercise
The second component of cardiovascular exercise is the duration, which refers to the time you've spent exercising. The cardiovascular session, not including the warm-up and cool-down, should vary from 20-60 minutes to gain significant cardiorespiratory and fat burning-benefits. Each time you do your cardiovascular exercise, try to do at least 20 minutes or more. Of course, the longer you go, the more calories and fat you'll "burn" and the better you'll condition your cardiovascular system. All beginners, especially those who are out of shape, should take a very conservative approach and train at relatively low intensities (50-70% max HR) for 10-25 minutes. As you get in better shape, you can gradually increase the duration of time you exercise.
It is important that you gradually increase the duration before you increase the intensity. That is, when beginning a walking program for example, be more concerned with increasing the number of minutes of the exercise session before you increase the intensity, by increasing your speed or by walking hilly terrain.
Please check back for Part Two, where I'll discuss how to monitor your training intensity and how to use heart zone training to achieve the specific results you desire. Until then, remember that cardiovascular exercise should be done a minimum of three times a week and a minimum of 20 minutes per session. Once your muscles are warm (after warm up) and after the cardiovascular exercise, you should stretch those muscles used in the exercise. For example, after bicycling, stretch your quadriceps, hamstrings, calves, hips, and low back. After doing the rowing machine, stretch .......

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Blueberries may banish belly fat

Busting belly fat may be yet another of blueberries health benefits.

A new study shows rats who ate a diet rich in blueberries lost abdominal fat -- the kind of fat linked to heart disease and diabetes -- as well as experienced other health benefits like lowered cholesterol and improved glucose control even if their diet wasn€t otherwise heart-healthy.

"Some measurements were changed by blueberry even if the rats were on a high-fat diet," researcher E. Mitchell Seymour, MS, of the University of Michigan€s Cardioprotection Research Laboratory, says in a news release.

Researchers say the results suggest that antioxidant-rich blueberries may change how the body stores and processes glucose or sugar for energy, thereby reducing the risk of both heart disease and diabetes.

"The benefits of eating fruits and vegetables have been well researched, but our findings in regard to blueberries show the naturally occurring chemicals they contain, such as anthocyanins, show promise in mitigating these health conditions," researcher Steven Bolling, MD, of the University of Michigan, says in the release.


Blueberries Boost Heart Health


In the study, presented at Experimental Biology 2009, researchers fed rats bred to become obese either a high-fat or low-fat diet enriched with whole blueberry powder or carbohydrates as 2% of their .......

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High fat low carb? Low fat high carb?

Determining Macronutrient Profiles.
In the last 20 years or so there has been a boom in interest in macronutrient ratios, or the proportions of proteins, carbohydrates and fats in our diet. We have seen the low fat diet, the Atkins diet, the food combining diet and many others. All of these diets are an attempt to manipulate body chemistry in such as way that the dieter loses body weight. And to a degree, they all work. Unfortunately they are all also detrimental to your health both in the long and short term. Most of these diets will produce weight loss, but the weight loss will be composed of a mixture of muscle tissue, water and some body fat. For more information about dieting for fat loss, ask about our Dietary Analysis Package. What follows is a description of some of the more commonly utilized nutrient ratios.

High Carb, Moderate Protein, Low Fat.

This is typically the dietary approach followed by athletes and active people. The benefits are that a large intake of carbohydrates gives plenty of energy, sufficient protein provides the building blocks for recovering from training and low fat provides a variety of health benefits including lowered risk of heart disease etc. The disadvantages of such an approach are that some individuals are insulin sensitive, which means that there body tends to deposit carbohydrate calories as body fat more readily than in others. Secondly, most of our carbohydrates come from heavily processed sources like white flour, which are almost devoid of fiber, vitamins and minerals. If you follow a high carb diet you must .......

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5 Solutions for Slimming

1. Set Mini-Goals: Try setting short-term or "mini" goals to help you achieve your goal of shedding the excess weight. Keep in mind that your mini goals should be specific and realistic, and they should have a measurable outcome. Setting your target in specific, measurable terms will increase your chances of accomplishing your long term goal of losing those unwanted pounds. In addition, remember to be realistic. If you've been consuming over 2000 calories, dont try cutting back to 1400 overnight. And if you haven't exercised all year, dont aim to run three miles each day.

2. Budget your foods: If you can budget your money, you can budget your foods. Aim to have a specific amount of fruits, vegetables, starches, proteins and fats throughout the day, or for each meal. By limiting the amounts of each type of food, you will be able to stay within a calorie level that .......

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