5 Cardio Exercises for Men to Boost Heart Health

Cardio exercises focus on improving muscle endurance, stamina, and strength. They enable the body to dip into its stored calorie reserves to generate energy and trigger the weight loss process. However, these exercises also allow you to improve heart health.

It’s not necessary to do cardio if you want to improve heart health, but cardio exercises are useful when the focus is on losing weight for better fitness.

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Cardio Exercises to Boost Heart Health

The following are five cardio exercises men can incorporate in their workout routine to burn extra calories and become leaner:

1) Running

It goes without saying that running is a great way to burn calories. You don’t need to specifically visit a fitness establishment to run. You can go for a run at a park, on the beach, or even the tracks.

However, if you want to go running at the gym, you can use the treadmill for the same. It's important to keep in mind that you must warm up the joints, especially the ankles and knees, before going for a run.

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2) Swimming

Swimming is a great cardio exercise, as it focuses on the entire body. It works the arms and legs along with improving breathing pattern.

There are several styles of swimming. You can incorporate the more advanced movements as your swimming improves.

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3) HIIT

HIIT stands for high intensity interval training. In this form of exercise, you put 100% effort in one exercise for 30-40 seconds, followed by the same exercise or another with 20% effort for 20 seconds.

The idea behind HIIT training is to raise the metabolism by raising the heart rate, allowing it to become slightly steady before raising it again. Many fitness enthusiasts have said that HIIT training has enabled them to lose weight even after they're done with the session due to raised metabolism.

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4) Resistance Training

Another great cardio exercise is resistance training. It uses external weights apart from bodyweight for exercise. The body dips into the store calories to generate the energy needed to fuel the efforts.

Ideally, you should combine resistance training along with a form of cardio like treadmills, StairMasters, or ellipticals for an optimal fitness boost.

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5) Cycling

Many commute to work using a cycle. It’s great for improving heart health and enables the muscles to become stronger, especially the legs.

Cycling helps with improving muscle endurance and stamina, and massively improves fitness. However, you can also use the stationary cycle (if you have access to one) for similar benefits if you do not cycle on the streets.

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Bottom Line

The best cardio exercises always help you accomplish more than just weight loss. They have an impact on strength, muscle gain and muscle endurance, and makes you fitter.

If you want to incorporate cardio exercises for weight loss, you should keep yourself in a calorie deficit. That's the only way the body can trigger weight loss by burning stored calories to make up for the deficit.

The fitter you become, the more your heart health will improve. However, keep in mind that weight loss is not always aligned with health improvement. You should always aim to be fitter, and everything else will follow.