Fitness Builds Health

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Fitness:  Calisthenics and Cardiorespiratory Exercise

Why is Exercise Essential?
A healthy body is determined by being free from any kinds of illnesses. However, it does not mean that when you’re not ill, you should just let your body disintegrate, as you grow old.

The best thing to do in order to maintain a healthy you is to have a proper balanced diet and regular exercise. Working out even for just ten minutes helps your blood to circulate properly, as it also promotes the building of muscles.

Types of Fitness Training
There are lots of different exercises especially made for body building, shaping and promoting a healthy body. Some of the exercises include weight lifting, while others do not. Some include choreography with music, while others are just plain exercises.

Exercises may vary from the simplest way of walking towards a more active workout like aerobics. All of these exercises are performed using muscles. Thus, they are intended to further enhance muscle strength, size, stamina and endurance.

Stretching prepares your muscles for more serious muscular movements. It helps elongate, build up and lubricate muscles by the steady application of force. It is regularly done before any other exercise to intensify the series of activities in the joints. It also helps prevent muscle cramps. It can be done before and after an exercise.

Calisthenics on the other hand, is a kind of fitness training or exercise used to boost the body’s strength, stamina and flexibility. Normally, you don’t need to have weights or any other equipment to perform this kind of exercise.

Benefits include: helps strengthen several muscles particularly the skeletal and the cardiac muscles; helps increase the rate of heart beat such that by doing so, facilitates a healthy heart. Calisthenics can also target problematic regions of the body like large bellies and thighs. The normal workouts are: sit-ups, jumping jacks, leg lifts and gymnastics. Here are some of the calisthenics exercises you can perform:

DUMBBELL CALF RAISES are done using a dumbbell held on one hand. Movements included here are calf bending, body raising/lifting and balancing which is usually done on top of a box.

HYPER-EXTENSIONS are done usually on a bench or any other elevated object and require the help of another person. This kind of exercise is primarily focused on the torso and legs.

GRIP EXERCISE builds ultimate strength on the hands and forearms. As the word grip describes, it implies a certain amount of force with the intense gripping of a rubber ball on the hands.

PUSH-UPS are one of the normal exercises known to target the abdominal muscles as well as build triceps, shoulders and chest.

SHRUG is one form of calisthenics exercise that targets the torso, shoulders and legs. It is similar to dumbbell calf raises such that it also uses dumbbells as props.

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Cardiorespiratory Fitness

Cardiorespiratory fitness training is a kind of exercise that enhances the capacity of both the circulatory and respiratory systems to provide adequate amounts of oxygen to the skeletal muscles. In the process, a healthy heart is produced as oxygen is sufficiently circulated all throughout the body. It is also known as CR endurance or aerobic fitness.

This condition is required to sustain the regular utilization of large groups of muscles. It is also needed at elevated levels to allow constant and uninterrupted bodily functions. High levels would also permit a fast recovery from fatigue.

Importance of Cardiorespiratory Fitness
CR fitness is said to be responsible for the prolonged use of large muscles of the body. It is expected to be at its peak, but it would depend on the state and ability of the cardiovascular, respiratory systems and the muscles as well.

It is the determining factor by which a body can be considered healthy or not. It also determines the lifespan of a person suffering from certain heart disease. If it can be heightened at some particular level, the risks of dying from cardiovascular disease will be reduced.

How to Improve Cardiorespiratory Fitness
Cardiorespiratory fitness can be further enhanced by doing a controlled healthy physical activity such as: walking, running, cycling, swimming, rowing, jumping rope, skiing and calisthenics exercises. These kinds of activities would further increase you pulse rate and thus helps you to sweat out all those unwanted toxins present in the body. However, before doing such vigorous workouts, it is always important to consult a physician first.

Safe Exercises for CR Fitness?
AEROBIC EXERCISE and RUNNING are types of CR fitness training. Oxygen is greatly used for the sufficient production the body’s needed energy requirements.

As oxygen is amply supplied to the muscles there is an efficient transfer of air in the lungs continuing to the blood vessels. The oxygenated blood is then transported to the muscles by the fast pumping action of the heart. In this manner, the size of the blood vessels are regulated as the blood is dispersed at a distance from a stationary muscle to a working one. Thus, blood is efficiently circulated into the bloodstream to the heart, improving the muscle’s working capacity and intensity.

ALTERNATIVE FORMS OF AEROBIC EXERCISE
There are a variety of aerobic exercises to choose from. By far, running is the most effective and therefore considered the easiest way of exercise since it doesn’t require any equipment and facilities.

Other options are: swimming, cycling, walking, cross-country skiing, jumping rope, racket sports, and dancing.

Remember: Before doing any physical activity don’t forget to condition your body. Do stretching prior to any exercises and consult your doctor.

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