Coupled with healthy diet and lifestyle, cardio exercises like walking, cycling, running, or jogging can increase your heart health and enhance your body’s metabolism. Cardio exercises can be done indoors or outdoors. If you’re a busy person, you might prefer an indoor training (in a fitness gym or at home) than outdoor training. Here’s a brief overview of the most popular types of cardio exercise equipment you can use or buy to improve your overall health:
1. Treadmills – This machine lets you walk, run, or jog in a smooth, very predictable terrain. Treadmills yield a wide variety of choices and can be programmed depending on your needs. If you’re just starting out, you can walk at a slow pace on level surface. As you progress, you can increase either the pace or incline so you can burn more fats and keep your heart rate in your target zone.
Compare to running outdoors, a treadmill pulls the ground underneath your feet so running is made somewhat easier. The cushioning in treadmills helps minimize stress on your joints. If you will run on the treadmill, it is best to look for one that has speed up to 10 mph and a longer deck to accommodate a longer stride. If you will walk on the treadmill, it is recommended to look for one with a maximum speed of 5 mph and a deck that is of average length.
2. Elliptical Trainers – An elliptical trainer lets you do a workout as intense as running or cross-country skiing but without any of the impact. Elliptical trainers are not weight bearers, so it’s gentle on the joints and provides a very fluid movement.
Elliptical trainers provide a variety of configurations. If you want to simulate walking or running up hills, it is best to try a machine that has an incline option. If you want to adjust the intensity of your workout, you may pedal faster, raise the incline, and increase the resistance or any combination of machine’s features.
3. Stationary Bikes – This cardio exercise equipment is especially designed for cycling which is considered by many fitness experts as the safest cross-training activity. Stationary bikes are also not weight bearers and can really help increase your endurance. Stationary bikes come in two varieties: upright and recumbent. Upright bikes imitate a regular bike while recumbent bikes let you sit in a slightly reclining position.
If you want a more steadily paced fat-burning workout, you can keep the resistance of your bike fairly low and spin the pedals faster. If you consider yourself already in advanced phase and your stationary bike has preprogrammed features, you may try the hill-climbing or interval option to enhance calorie burn. You may also try to simulate climbing a hill by manually increasing the resistance for a few minutes and then decreasing it.
According to the book “Make Over Your Metabolism” by Robert Reames, you can “manage your weight, shape, and appetite by providing a time-efficient, fat-burning exercise plan, a super simple nutrition plan that will optimize your metabolism, and lifestyle strategies that will help correct red flags that interfere with a healthy metabolism.” While it is true that the use of cardio exercise equipment in performing training to enhance metabolism and overall health, you must remember that too much cardio is bad for your health.
Thus, many fitness experts recommend that a 30-minute cardio exercise is enough to keep your metabolism healthy.