Fitness

Aerobic means air/oxygen. Therefore, aerobic exercises would mean consuming the free oxygen by a constant physical activity. Fitness freaks and exercise enthusiasts love to involve themselves in aerobic exercises as it is a way of expending energy and having a great time! Another point that you need to remember about aerobics is that oxygen is the fuel that helps sustenance of activity. But with any workout, you can’t expect results instantly. Your body’s metabolism has to get used to the current routine. Aerobics is the best form of cardio (making your heart stronger!), helps you lose weight and also tones up your muscles. Aerobics has several health benefits and other added advantages such as: it helps in conducting your daily work with vigor; it increases circulation of blood to the heart and raises your immunity helping you recover/heal faster etc. Common examples of aerobics are biking, cycling, swimming, walking, jogging and popularly, dancing! To perfect some of those dance moves, read the next section of the article.

Aerobic Workout Routine

Warm Up

This forms an important part of aerobics because without a warm up your body will sense sudden shock. When any job is performed, it takes a while for the nervous system to wake up and get ready for all communication and activity. The role of warming up is telling your brain to send some energy into your muscles! While doing these stretching and warm ups, the amount of oxygen you inhale increases and thus, breathing speeds up. Warming up begins the process of circulation of blood so that you can keep working out for atleast an hour before tiring. By skipping a warm up, you might feel dizzy due to lack of oxygen, become breathless or, in a worst case scenario, even get injured. Warm up must consist of atleast 10-20 minutes of good stretching. Examples include: climbing up stairs, bending and touching your toes, jumping up and down etc.

Aerobics

This can be done ranging from 30 min to 1 hour depending on your physical abilities (or age!). There are two types: the low impact and high impact aerobics.

The low impact aerobics is especially designed to place stress on lower parts of your body and feet. Put on some fast music with beats and the steps to these moves will be where your feet in is contact with the ground at all times. Be careful as this type can lead to hamstring pulls and shin splits but, on the whole, the risk is reduced. This is a more relaxed and non-vigorous type of exercise. Squats, touching toes, arm movements etc are all examples.

High impact aerobics on the other hand never lets you put your feet on the ground! They are aggressive and increase the heart rate to a maximum. Risk of injury is high as your feet hit surfaces and your body becomes quite contorted. Shock absorbers and good footwear minimize this risk. Jumping, high performance dancing and gymnastics could be examples. High and low impact aerobics can be combined for a perfect workout.

Cooling Down

In this stage, move very slowly so that your muscles relax and bring your heart beat down. Play slow beat music for this purpose. For example, raise your hands while you inhale and drop them down as you exhale. Repeat for counts of 5.  Drink about a glass of water at the end to rehydrate yourself.

Hope this aerobic exercise routine will become a routine in your daily living soon!