Benefits of Steady State Cardio
Steady state cardio refers to any cardiovascular exercise where you maintain a steady pace or output for a specified amount of time. For instance, steady walking, jogging, swimming, cycling, or using an elliptical at a sustained rate all count.
This type of cardio delivers impressive benefits for your health, body composition and quality of life. In this article, we will discuss six unique benefits of steady state cardio.
Hopefully, these benefits will encourage you to get started on a regular cardio routine.
Increase Fat Loss
Steady state cardio helps you to increase fat loss. An hour of jogging or swimming can burn between 300 to 600 calories or more. This type of cardio can help you burn calories and create a calorie deficit to help you lose weight. Steady state cardio for 30 or 60 minutes can burn more calories than any other type of exercise.
If you want to lose weight or increase fat loss, regular steady aerobic exercise can help you burn more calories and create a calorie deficit. Just make sure you do not negate your calorie deficit by overeating.
Improve Cardiovascular Fitness
This type of cardio can also improve your cardiovascular fitness. Working for a set time period at 60 to 85 percent of your maximum heart rate can improve your heart health. This type of exercise can reduce resting and exercise heart rate by increasing the amount of blood your heart can pump to the working muscles during each beat (stroke volume).
Steady state cardio can help you increase your overall heart health and fitness, improve circulation, lower blood pressure and reduce fatigue during exercise and at rest.
Improve Recovery
Did you know that regular steady state cardio can even improve your exercise recovery? Cardio at a low intensity can increase blood flow and nutrient delivery to muscles that may feel sore from your last strength training session.
Regular low intensity steady state cardio can create a new network of capillaries into your muscle cells to get waste products out and bring nutrients in to improve recovery.
Regular cardio also helps you reduce stress and helps you shift into a “rest and digest” state. Over time, this type of cardio can improve your physical recovery from stressful workouts and life events.
Improve Mood
Interestingly, cardio exercise can also improve your mood. The combination of strength training and cardio training can help reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety by more than one type of exercise alone.
Cyclic cardio activities like running, jogging, walking at a brisk pace, or cycling can boost mood and reduce depression. These types of activities even have chronic changes on your brain, boosting mood, increasing resilience to stress and improving learning and new memory formation.
Improve Sleep
Additionally, steady state cardio can help improve sleep, both in the short term and the long term.
Regular cardio may not help you sleep better right away, but a regular cardio exercise habit can improve sleep in the long term. This type of exercise improves sleep by boosting endorphins, shifting your body into a more parasympathetic state and helping you relax and decrease anxiety that may hit you late at night.
Interestingly, this type of exercise can also improve deep sleep that helps your body and brain repair.
Live Longer
Steady state cardiovascular exercise can help you live longer by reducing the risk of chronic diseases like high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke. Regular aerobic exercise can also reduce your risk of a heart attack.
Perhaps not surprisingly, researchers have begun to understand that regular exercise may impact and even slow the aging process. Regular aerobic exercise prevents and slows many age related changes in your muscle cells. In fact, aerobic exercise may positively affect every organ system of your body.
If you want to live longer and increase your chances of good health in old age, please consider taking up regular steady aerobic exercise.
Final Thoughts
Steady state cardio can be great for your health and well being. While this type of exercise might not seem as sexy as high intensity interval training or heavy weight lifting, it’s still worthwhile to put steady aerobic exercise into your weekly routine.
Your body and brain will thank you.
