Geschatte leestijd: 5 minutenWhat are the best cardio exercises to include in your training schedule? If you’ve decided to do cardio, this is a common question. After all, there are a lot of cardio exercises to choose from. In this article, we want to provide you with the 8 best cardio exercises. Before we start, a small note: the “best cardio exercises” are, of course, very subjective, and you should determine for yourself whether these exercises are the best for your personal situation and goals.
Table of Contents
- What is cardio
- Are cardio exercises necessary?
- Benefits of cardio exercises
- Disadvantages of cardio exercises
- Best cardio exercises
- Running
- Walking
- Jumping rope
- Stair climbing
- Elliptical trainer
- Rowing machine
- Boxing
- Calisthenics
What is cardio
Cardio exercises are essentially exercises that primarily target and train the cardiovascular system. The cardiovascular system relates to the heart and blood vessels. So with cardiovascular training, or cardio training, we mean any form of training aimed at raising the heart rate.
When you want to apply these cardio exercises in practice, these are mainly the workouts aimed at improving fitness or burning fat. Examples of these cardio exercises are:
Jumping rope
Running
Cycling
Swimming
Circuit training
High Intensity Interval Training.
As you can see, cardio exercises can also be of short duration, so cardio is not synonymous with long endurance sports.
Are cardio exercises necessary?
The necessity of cardio exercises is very subjective and depends largely on the goals you as an athlete have set for yourself. The most common reason to do this is mainly fat burning.
As you may have read on this site, doing cardio exercises is not a requirement if you want to lose weight and work on your fat burning. If you create a negative energy balance, you can lose weight just fine.
However, there are many other benefits, besides weight loss, that they can offer.
Benefits of cardio exercises
The benefits of doing cardio exercises are varied. But perhaps the most important advantage is improving your fitness. When doing cardio exercises, your heart becomes stronger and can pump more blood. A stronger heart means you can pump more oxygen and thus your heart doesn’t have to work as hard.
In addition to better fitness, you can also eat more. After all, you increase your activity level, so you build up a buffer on the energy balance, which you can then fill with energy from food.
Finally, cardio exercises can also lead to a more active metabolism, higher insulin sensitivity, and better sleep quality.
Disadvantages of cardio exercises
Of course, there are also disadvantages to doing cardio exercises. After all, you need more energy because you move more, which can lead to overeating. Especially if you don’t keep track of how many calories you consume and how much you burn. In addition, doing a lot of prolonged cardio can lead to injuries. Especially if you do cardio every day.
It’s also known that your cortisol levels increase when you expose your body to a lot of cardio. This increase in the stress hormone cortisol can lead to a decrease in muscle mass.
Best cardio exercises
So, you want to try the best cardio exercises now. What are they? The exercises that involve the major muscle groups the most absorb the most oxygen and are therefore the best. Furthermore, cardio exercises that offer benefits in other sports are also better than exercises that do not offer these benefits.
Running
Running is one of the simplest and most efficient forms of cardio exercises. You can do it without much difficulty, and you are not limited by fitness equipment. So you can run outdoors or you can run on the treadmill at the gym. When you start running, good shoes are important so that you don’t immediately start with running injuries. Furthermore, it is advisable to run consistently, so 3 times a week, 5 kilometers, and to alternate this with interval training.
Also read the article: how many calories do you burn while running?
Walking
Walking is a cardio exercise that is also easy to do without too many limitations. Because you can do cardio at your own pace and length, it is perfectly applicable for novice athletes. When walking, you don’t burn as many calories because the intensity is much lower, but if you increase the pace of walking and cover a long distance, you can also burn quite a few calories while walking. In addition, walking is much safer for the knees and for injuries if you are sensitive to them.
Jumping Rope
A cardio exercise that is slightly more challenging than running and walking is jumping rope. Jumping rope has made a comeback with the advent of Crossfit. When jumping rope, you naturally need a jump rope and you can improve your fitness and explosiveness and balance. In addition, you can make jumping rope much more challenging by applying variations such as double unders, jumping with both legs, switching legs, and more.
Stair Climbing
In the gym or at home: stair climbing is a perfect cardio exercise. In the gym, you often come across the step mill, also called the step mill. But at home, in the office, or in other public places, you come across enough stairs that can also serve as a cardio exercise. The intensity of stair climbing comes mainly from the fact that you are working against gravity. Each step is a more intense action that your body has to perform. If you want to increase the intensity of stair climbing, skip a step. This way you put your leg muscles and glutes to work more. Or increase the pace of stair climbing so that you go up faster.
Also read the articles: High blood pressure? Go stair climbing! and Stair climbing gives more energy than Caffeine.
Elliptical Trainer
The elliptical trainer in the gym is one of the most popular cardio machines in the gym. Often, the elliptical trainer is placed in front of a TV screen, and you can do your cardio exercises while enjoying your favorite soap. The popularity of the elliptical trainer is mainly due to the fact that you train both your upper and lower body at the same time. Many elliptical trainers also offer the possibility to increase the intensity, so that the resistance becomes heavier. This way you work on both your fitness and the strength in your leg muscles.
Rowing Machine
Also popular in the gym is the rowing machine. The rowing machine, also known as the rowing ergometer, is a cardio exercise where you can also train both your upper and lower body. When performing the exercise on the rowing machine, you mainly activate your lower body in the first part of the movement and mainly activate your back, shoulders, and arms in the second part of the movement. Just like with the elliptical trainer, you can increase the resistance on the rowing machine to make rowing more difficult.
Boxing
Many people underestimate the intensity of boxing. The general assumption about boxing is that you need a lot of muscle strength to increase your punching power, but boxing is a perfect cardio exercise. Because you can do various punches and you are constantly moving with both your arms and your legs, it demands a lot from your endurance. And if you are facing someone who actually hits you and when you have to absorb those punches, that brings a new dimension with it.
Calisthenics
On the rise and incredibly popular is calisthenics. Literally translated: beautiful strength. Calisthenics is a way of training where you do complex exercises with your body weight, often on pull-up bars. This makes calisthenics a good strength workout and a cardio exercise. You can do exercises like mountain climbers, jumping jacks, and burpees. Because with every exercise you continuously make your muscles work to control your body weight, it is not only a workout for your muscles but also very good for your fitness.
