Exercise that increases your heart rate helps improve your cardiovascular system, leading to decreased risks for diseases and conditions such as high cholesterol and blood pressure, stroke and coronary heart disease, according to the Mayo Clinic. Workouts that use aerobic and anaerobic training intensities also help you lose weight and improve sports performance. Adding cardio exercise to your lifestyle can help you feel better, compete longer and live healthier.
Improved Stamina
Stamina, or endurance, is your ability to exercise or participate in physical activity over a period of time. The more you perform exercise at higher intensity levels, the more cardiovascular stamina you build. If you take up jogging or using a treadmill or playing tennis, you'll soon discover that the more often you run or play, the longer you'll be able to do it, and you'll be less tired when you're finished. This is an example of improved stamina.
Increased Calorie Burning
Exercise at moderate and moderately intense levels burns more calories from fat per minute than higher-intensity cardio workouts; however, aerobic exercise burns more calories overall, so working out at higher intensity levels helps you burn more calories. With increased calorie burning comes increased weight loss. Excess weight leads to a variety of health problems, including lower back pain. According to the Wellness Council of America, more than 100 million workdays are lost each year because of lower back pain in workers. If one of your exercise goals is weight loss, cardio workouts are a more efficient way to lose weight than moderate-intensity exercises.
Improved Cholesterol Level
Health organizations such as the American Heart Association and Mayo Clinic recommend aerobic exercise as one way to combat the effects of poor cholesterol numbers. Aerobic exercise lowers the amount of disease-causing, low-density lipids in your blood and raises your high-density lipoprotein, or "good cholesterol" numbers.
Improved Performance
Sprint training is a form of cardio exercise that has you work at very high levels of intensity for short periods of time, with longer rest periods between each bout of activity in order to help you recover better after physical activity. For example, basketball, football and tennis players are rarely tired during a point or play, but can often be seen bending over trying to catch their breath afterward. Sprint cardio exercises help you train your body's recovery systems.
