Keeping your cardiovascular system healthy and robust takes effort. Other than a proper diet and rest, being active is one of the main requirements for a healthy life. Unfortunately, a sedentary lifestyle is the reality of many: research shows that Americans spend an average of 11 hours per day sitting.

In preserving health, it’s essential to get moving and do it at least a few times per week. If you want to strengthen your cardiovascular system, here are our four best tips that involve activity:

1. Try Interval Training

Interval training consists of a short burst of intense exercise, followed by a brief period of rest. It will push you to your limits in the best possible way for your cardiovascular fitness. However, you need to approach it with care and make sure you’re not trying it before you’re ready.

Depending on your level of fitness, you can opt for different activities as the main ones for your high-intensity practice. Interval training can be too challenging as a daily workout, but it is likely to improve your cardiovascular health if you incorporate it into your routine a couple of times per week.

2. Do Aerobic Exercise.

Aerobic exercise is also known as cardio, and it is designed to get your heart pumping. Cardio helps to strengthen your cardiovascular system by increasing heart rate, oxygen, and blood flow. It can vary in intensity, but some of the most popular cardio workouts include:

  • Walking
  • Running
  • Swimming
  • Cycling

3.  Adjust Exercise Duration

When it comes to the duration of the exercise, it all depends on how many times per week you work out. The minimum recommendation for the activity for one week is 150 minutes.  It can translate to 50-minute sessions three times per week, or 30 minutes of exercise, five days a week. If you want to enjoy more benefits and strengthen your cardiovascular system, working out more is a good option — 300 minutes per week would provide noticeable results.

4. Increase Exercise Intensity

If you increase the intensity of your workouts, your heart will work harder, and your workout will have more benefits. In that regard, sprinting will be better for you than jogging, if you do it regularly and optimize the workout to your fitness levels. In addition to that, increasing the intensity of your workouts fits in well with interval training.

The most important part of increasing intensity is to challenge yourself. For example, you don’t have to start sprinting, but you might want to try a faster jog. In keeping your cardiovascular system healthy, you need to provide a challenge to your body and keep moving your limits.

Your health matters to us at Premier Heart & Vascular Center. Our mission is to take care of it as best we can. If you have any concerns about your cardiovascular health, our highly-skilled team will happily answer your questions and take care of you.

Visit our website to find out more about what we do and how we make it possible.