Back to basics: Aerobic vs Anaerobic exercise and the most effective forms.

There’s so many buzzwords flying around the fitness industry right now. This form of training, that form of dieting, and that way of living. It’s confusing, almost intrusive.

This blog covers the very basic of terminologies, covering the realm of what aerobic exercise is and what it consists of/ types that are most effective for exercise.

First and foremost, let’s start with the basics. What exactly is aerobic exercise?

Aerobic, very simply, is the presence of oxygen intact within a living system. Combining that with exercise, simply again, it’s the presence of extra oxygen while exercising. It’s such exercising that boosts the immunity of the cardiovascular system, such as the heart and lungs.


This cardiovascular conditioning can involve movements such as brisk walking, running, cycling or swimming. Aerobic exercise differs from the anaerobic exercise definition because it involves the inclusion of extra oxygen when performing the exercise, as well as exercising for an extended period of time. In contrast, anaerobic exercise does not need the inclusion of extra oxygen, and is correlated to movements which requires short, brief bursts of energy. Some examples being something like weight lifting or sprinting.

Types of cardiovascular exercise:

Swimming:

Swimming is a great way to work your body cardiovascular wise as it heightens your heart rate, alleviates stress on your joints and increases your lung capacity. Unalike running, swimming is different as your body is moving in a horizontal manner, meaning that it allows more blood to run into your heart, rather than your legs which you would get from any type of standing based exercise.

Running:

Running of course is a very simple way to engage your cardiovascular system within your body, again raising your heart rate, pumping your body with blood and strengthening your body conditionally.

According to the Harvard of Health publishing and well..common sense, running does place more strain on your joints than swimming, something that is not optimal for injury recovery or prevention.

Cardiovascular exercise and Interval Training:

Interval training is an interesting concept that is coming up a lot in the modern fitness industry. Interval training is working exercise periods in intervals…not that hard right?

Interval training is popular as it combines exercise types into interesting blocks of exercise.

Such examples are things such as spin cycle intervals, running pacing intervals and swimming blocks of differing pace and technique.

Interval training and anaerobic training.  

Combining interval training with cardiovascular exercise is a great way to change things around and keep things interesting. Interval training in basic terms means doing the exercise in differing intervals, which can mostly mean tempos or intensity. For example, sprinting for a certain short period of time and alternating that to slower, recovering phases.

The interesting thing about interval training is that it works both the aerobic and anaerobic systems, the anaerobic system coming into play with the short bursts of activity and using the energy stored in the muscles (glycogen). So if you are after a bit of anaerobic conditioning mixed with aerobic, go for interval training.

So there you have it, the basics of aerobic training and ways to make it interesting (interval training)

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