Aerobic exercise facts

Aerobic exercise is sometimes known as "cardio"- exercise that requires pumping of

oxygenated blood by the heart to deliver oxygen to working muscles.
Aerobic exercise stimulates the heart rate and breathing rate to increase in a way that can
be sustained for the exercise session. In contrast, anaerobic ("without oxygen") exercise
is activity that causes you to be quickly out of breath, like sprinting or lifting a heavy
weight.
Examples of aerobic exercises include cardio machines, spinning, running, swimming,
walking, hiking, aerobics classes, dancing, cross country skiing, and kickboxing. There
are many other types.
Aerobic exercises can become anaerobic exercises if performed at a level of intensity that
is too high.
Aerobic exercise not only improves fitness; it also has known benefits for both physical
and emotional health.
Aerobic exercise can help prevent or reduce the chance of developing some cancers,
diabetes, depression, cardiovascular disease, and osteoporosis.

What is aerobic exercise?

Imagine that you're exercising. You're working up a sweat, you're breathing hard, your heart is
thumping, blood is coursing through your vessels to deliver oxygen to the muscles to keep you moving,
and you sustain the activity for more than just a few minutes. That's aerobic exercise (also known as
"cardio" in gym lingo), which is any activity that you can sustain for more than just a few minutes while
your heart, lungs, and muscles work overtime. In this article, I'll discuss the mechanisms of aerobic
exercise: oxygen transport and consumption, the role of the heart and the muscles, the proven benefits
of aerobic exercise, how much you need to do to reap the benefits, and more.

The beginning

It all starts with breathing. The average healthy adult inhales and exhales about 7 to 8 liters of air
per minute. Once you fill your lungs, the oxygen in the air (air contains approximately 20%
oxygen) is filtered through small branches of tubes (called bronchioles) until it reaches the
alveoli. The alveoli are microscopic sacs where oxygen diffuses (enters) into the blood. From
there, it's a beeline direct to the heart.

Getting to the heart of it

The heart has four chambers that fill with blood and pump blood (two atria and two ventricles)
and some very active coronary arteries. Because of all this action, the heart needs a fresh supply
of oxygen, and as you just learned, the lungs provide it. Once the heart uses what it needs, it
pumps the blood, the oxygen, and other nutrients out through the large left ventricle and through
the circulatory system to all the organs, muscles, and tissues that need it.

A whole lot of pumping going on

Your heart beats approximately 60-80 times per minute at rest, 100,000 times a day, more than
30 million times per year, and about 2.5 billion times in a 70-year lifetime! Every beat of your
heart sends a volume of blood (called stroke volume -- more about that later), along with oxygen
and many other life-sustaining nutrients, circulating through your body. The average healthy
adult heart pumps about 5 liters of blood per minute.

What are the fitness benefits of aerobic exercise?

1. Your heart gets stronger and pumps more blood with each beat (larger stroke volume).
Elite athletes, as I just mentioned, can have stroke volumes more than twice as high as
 average individuals. But it's not just that. Conditioned hearts also have greater diameter
and mass (the heart's a muscle too and gets bigger when you train it), and they pump
efficiently enough to allow for greater filling time, which is a good thing because it
means that more blood fills the chambers of the heart before they pump so that more
blood gets pumped with each beat.
2. Greater stroke volume means the heart doesn't have to pump as fast to meet the demands
of exercise. Fewer beats and more stroke volume mean greater efficiency. Think about a
pump emptying water out of a flooded basement. The pump works better and lasts longer
if it can pump larger volumes of water with each cycle than if it has to pump faster and
strain to get rid of the water. High stroke volume is why athletes' hearts don't pump as
fast during exercise and why they have such low resting heart rates; sometimes as low as
40 beats per minute, whereas the average is 60-80 beats per minutes.
3. Downstream from the heart are your muscles, which get more efficient at consuming
oxygen when you do regular aerobic exercise (remember, "consuming" oxygen means
that the muscles are taking the oxygen out of the blood). This happens because of an
increase in the activity and number of enzymes that transport oxygen out of the
bloodstream and into the muscle. Imagine 100 oxygen molecules circulating past a
muscle. You're twice as fit if the muscle can consume all 100 molecules than if it can
only consume 50. Another way of saying it is that you're twice as fit as someone if your
VO2 max is 60ml/kg/min. and theirs is 30ml/kg/min. In terms of performance in this
scenario, you'll have more endurance because your muscles won't run out of oxygen as
quickly.
4. Mitochondria inside the muscle increase in number and activity. Mitochondria are the
powerhouses of your cells. They do all the heavy-duty work to keep you moving. They
use the oxygen to burn the fat and carbohydrate that makes you go. The good news is that
they increase in number and activity, by as much as 50%, in just a matter of days to
weeks in response to regular aerobic exercise in adults of all ages.

What is the difference between aerobic and anaerobic exercise?

I defined aerobic exercise for you in the introduction. It's any activity that stimulates your
heart rate and breathing to increase but not so much that you can't sustain the activity for
more than a few minutes. Aerobic means "with oxygen," and anaerobic means "without
oxygen." Anaerobic exercise is the type where you get out of breath in just a few
moments, like when you lift weights for improving strength, when you sprint, or when
you climb a long flight of stairs.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defined health in its broader sense in 1946 as "a state of
complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."
Exercise any bodily activity that enhances or maintains physical fitness and overall health and
wellness.

Exercise & Fitness

Exercising regularly, every day if possible, is the single most important thing you can do for your
health. In the short term, exercise helps to control appetite, boost mood, and improve sleep. In
the long term, it reduces the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, dementia, depression, and
many cancers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend the following:

For adults of all ages

At least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise like brisk walking or 75 minutes of
rigorous exercise like running (or an equivalent mix of both) every week. Its fine to
break up exercise into smaller sessions as long as each one lasts at least 10 minutes.
Strength-training that works all major muscle groupslegs, hips, back, abdomen, chest,
shoulders, and armsat least two days a week. Strength training may involve lifting
 weights, using resistance bands, or exercises like push-ups and sit-ups, in which your
body weight furnishes the resistance.

What is the difference between aerobic and anaerobic exercise?

I defined aerobic exercise for you in the introduction. It's any activity that stimulates your heart
rate and breathing to increase but not so much that you can't sustain the activity for more than a
few minutes. Aerobic means "with oxygen," and anaerobic means "without oxygen." Anaerobic
exercise is the type where you get out of breath in just a few moments, like when you lift weights
for improving strength, when you sprint, or when you climb a long flight of stairs.

Dancing, swimming, water aerobics, biking, walking, hiking, climbing steps (two at a time for a
more vigorous workout), low-impact dance classes, kick-boxing, all the cardio machines at the
gum (treadmill, elliptical, bike, rower, x-c skiing, stair-climber), and many other activities are all
examples of types of aerobic or cardio activities, but they can be anaerobic too if they are
performed at a high enough intensity. Try riding your bike alongside Lance Armstrong in the
French Alps and you'll know what anaerobic exercise means in moments. But then again, riding
along on your bike at a leisurely 8-10 mph on the boardwalk at the seashore is the same activity,
but at a much lower intensity, much lower heart rate, and much lower oxygen consumption, and
so in this case, biking is aerobic. The bottom line is that the intensity at which you perform an
activity determines if it's aerobic or anaerobic.

Aerobic, Muscle- and Bone-Strengthening: What Counts?

To get you started, here is a list of possible activities that children and adolescents can do to meet
the Guidelines. These activities serve as a guide, so encourage your child to do any of them, as
long as they are age-appropriate.

Many of these activities fall under two or three different categories, making it possible for your
child do each type of activity vigorous-intensity aerobic, muscle- and bone-strengthening
activity on at least 3 days each week. Also, some activities, such as bicycling or basketball, can
be done at either a moderate- or a vigorous-intensity, depending on your child's level of effort.