Maintaining a healthy body is a boon for the overall functioning of the heart’s circulatory system. Meanwhile, you don’t need many exercises to improve your heart health. You can take good care of your heart with the five best practices consulted in this article on Healthy Genre. You can prevent the risk of heart disease by doing heart-healthy exercise, having a balanced diet, and avoiding unhealthy habits. Thus, to boost your heart’s condition, build a habit of regular exercising first, and your body will feel energetic the whole day.
Why is Exercising Necessary
For muscle-strengthening and flexibility, regular exercising is necessary. It boosts the functionality of all the body systems and helps you feel energetic by improving several health conditions as it’s beneficial
- To strengthen heart muscles and joints
- Improves lung function
- Controls blood pressure, cholesterol, sugar, and triglycerides
- Lessens the threat of heart attack and heart disease
These days, on seeing the risks of heart disease, practicing daily exercises helps manage good heart conditions. So, this year, let’s decide to do physical activities for a healthy heart and lifestyle.
What Are the Five Best Heart Healthy Exercises You Can Start With
Running
Running is one of the best exercises to lower the risk of heart disease. You can spend 10 to 15 minutes at least practicing jogging or walking a few miles daily. You can habitually run twice a day(morning or evening) for better heart health. Hence, increasing your heart rate and getting sweaty is one of the effective ways to keep your heart strong.
Strength Training
Resistance training helps build solid muscles or increase muscle mass. With this strength training, a person can lower the risk of heart disease by up to 70 percent if done regularly. It’s one of the best forms of exercise to strengthen heart health, reduce the risk of diabetes, and control blood pressure.
Hence, to have the fantastic perks of strength training, do it daily, at least for 20 minutes to 1 hour. This specific muscle-strengthening practice can be done using weights, resistance bands, and regular body movements like push-ups, squats, lunges, dips, step-ups, and pull-ups.
Stretching
For a flexible body, stretching is the ultimate practice. With regular stretching, you’ll get strong muscles. If a person never stretches, the muscles become tight and weak enough. So make sure to straighten your legs or joints; otherwise, your habit of continuously sitting or resting will result in tight hamstrings. Hence, not performing muscle activities increases the risk of joint pains, strains, and muscle damage.
Swimming
Swimming is one of the best activities that benefits you from head to toe. It’s a practice to strengthen your bones and joints by burning calories. While doing it, your muscles help your body move underwater. It helps reduce stress, heart disease, stiffness/joint pains, and weight gain. Thus, adding this fun activity to your list of workouts is a brilliant idea. Make sure to join the best instructors for swimming if you have no idea how to swim.
Yoga
Yoga is widely known as an exercise for the mind and body. While it is known to relax our mind, it’s another side of physical activities or postures that helps boost the functionality of our cardiovascular system. Practicing several asanas or postures in routine keeps the blood pressure, cholesterol, and sugar under control, and hence, it benefits our heart health automatically. However, specific heart condition postures need to be performed to strengthen our heart muscles and their functioning.
How Much Time Do You Need to Invest in Exercising
Maintaining a consistent workout schedule is vital for a healthy body. Meanwhile, to keep your heart robust, switch to heart-healthy exercises. Make sure to follow the duration of physical activity for optimal heart health. There are mainly three main categories of physical activity.
- Light Intensity( slow walk and light housework)
- Moderate Intensity( brisk walking for upto 2.4 to 4.0 miles, active yoga, dancing, gardening, cycling(5 to 8 miles)
- Vigorous Intensity(jogging, running, hiking, bicycling (≥10 miles per hour), swimming, jumping rope, aerobics, weight lifting, stair climbing, shoveling snow)
At least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity per week is enough to lower the risk of heart disease. In case of any medical concerns, avoid exercising without the advice of a doctor.
A Word From Health Genre
Try to follow the exercise routine as it reduces the risk of developing several health issues related to the heart and other organs. However, your body takes some time to adapt to this new habit of working, but undoubtedly, it’s fruitful if you succeed in making it your routine. So, to improve the overall functionality of your heart, keep it fit with heart-healthy exercises.