Cardiorespiratory fitness is a vital component of overall health and fitness, but many people don’t know how to measure it or improve it. This is a problem because it can affect how well you do at just about any exercise.
There are three components to cardiorespiratory fitness: breathing, oxygen consumption, and skeletal muscle metabolism. All of these aspects work together to help you reach your fitness goals.
Breathing enables your body to take in more oxygen, which allows you to do longer, harder workouts without getting tired. Your heart pumps this oxygen-rich blood throughout your body, delivering it to your muscles and other organs when they need it most.
Oxygen is the most important element in your workouts, but there are other benefits to cardiorespiratory fitness as well. It helps your heart and lungs function better, and lowers your cholesterol level, which can decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease.
In addition, it can also help you perform your daily activities with less stress on your body and improve your mood. In fact, researchers found that a higher level of cardiorespiratory fitness is associated with better multitask performance and less stress on your body.
Improved Workout Efficiency
As you become more familiar with your regular cardiorespiratory routine, your body will learn how to pull oxygen from your blood faster, which will allow you to finish workouts more efficiently and in less time. This can help you meet your fitness goals, like running a mile without stopping or lifting a weight for an hour straight.
Improved Recovery During Exercise
As your body becomes accustomed to working out regularly, it will also become more resilient to stress during exercise. It will be able to recover more quickly after exercise, which can help you get back into your daily routine quicker and easier than before.
Low Cardiorespiratory Fitness is an Independent Risk Factor for All-Cause Mortality
There is strong evidence that those who are not as fit as they should be have an increased risk of death from all causes. This is because they are at greater risk of developing heart disease and other diseases that lead to premature death, such as cancer.
It is therefore essential to increase your fitness levels by performing aerobic endurance exercises as well as strength training. This combination has been shown to reduce the risks of coronary heart disease (CHD), stroke, and cancer, and may even prevent the onset of these diseases later in life.
Improving your cardiorespiratory fitness can be done through a variety of different ways, such as by increasing the length of time you can exercise for or the intensity at which you do it. It is also possible to increase your VO2 max, which is the amount of oxygen you can use in a minute while exercising.
A higher level of cardiorespiratory fitness has also been linked to reduced mortality, especially in women. Studies in apparently healthy men and women found that those with a low level of cardiorespiratory fitness had twice the mortality rate of those with high levels of cardiorespiratory fitness.
Milena Estêvão is a YouTuber passionate about sharing her experiences (challenges, successes and motivations) in the fitness activities she is involved in.
FIND HER ON INSTAGRAM OR YOUTUBE THROUGH THE BELOW LINKS