You may be one of the many people who want to start an effective cardiovascular fitness program but aren’t too excited about the extremely high cost of personal trainers, club memberships, and exercise equipment. There is always the option of purchasing a plain pair of tennis shoes and hitting the road, but this idea is hard for most to look forward to.
If you are one of the lucky ones and cost is not an issue, the question becomes how much and how hard do you have to work to see positive results. There isn’t anything more annoying than continuing an expensive fitness program and not knowing if you will ever see results.
The most common plan for effective cardio fitness and weight loss will range anywhere from nothing to a couple hundred dollars. This plan includes a manual treadmill, which you can substitute for running in place, or even jumping rope if you want. The equipment is not important. You are exercising your body after all.
The key to success in cardiovascular training is the ability to accurately monitor your heart rate. Monitoring your heart rate before and during exercise will tell you exactly how hard you need to train to receive a beneficial training effect. Almost any activity that works the legs continuously for twenty minutes or longer will produce some weight loss effects.
There isn’t a need to guess when you can know for sure what heart rate, within a few beats per minute, you are required to maintain during exercise. The specific heart rate is called you Training Heart Rate (THR). Your THR is based upon your current age and physical condition.
The formula you need to determine you THR in beats-per-minute is pretty simple and fast. First subtract your current age from 220. This answer is referred to as your maximum heart rate (MHR). If you consider yourself to be in great physical condition your training rate is 90% of your MHR. If you are in fair physical condition your training rate is 80% of MHR. If you are in poor physical condition your training rate is set at 70% of your MHR.
If you find that you are having discomfort exercising at 60% of your MHR then immediately stop what you are doing. You should consider getting a complete medically supervised physical examination. Besides exercising at less that 60% of your MHR would have almost no cardiovascular training effect so why take the risk.