Cardiovascular Fitness? Here's A Training Plan For Beginners To Follow

Workout plan for beginners: How to keep your heart and blood circulation pumping?

One of the essential advantages of training apart from body recomposition, strength building, improved joint health and posture is the improvement of cardiovascular health.

Cardiovascular health refers to the health of the heart and the blood vessels; this is crucial for one's overall well-being and for reducing heart disease risks. Most forms of training will directly or indirectly improve heart health, but a few guidelines can be followed to ensure that your activity directly impacts and improves your cardiovascular system to a reasonable degree. Cardiovascular fitness is an essential aspect of every training program, and it simply means the body's efficiency in taking in and distributing oxygen to muscles and organs during prolonged exercise.

To start with, the baseline setting is a great place to start. Then, a few easy and simple tests can be done periodically to track your progress and benchmark your current cardiovascular fitness. One super easy and simple test is 'Cooper's 2.4km walk/run test'. This can be done before you start your training program to see where you stand and can be repeated once every 4-6 weeks to see if you have improved concerning your previous results. Gauthaman Ramesh, Fitness Expert, Cult.fit explains how Cooper's 2.4km walk test can be done.

Coopers 2.4 Km Walk/Run Test: This test can be done on a treadmill or outdoors. You must complete 2.4 km by walking, running, jogging, or a compilation of all. The point of the test is to finish the 2.4 km as fast as possible.

1. After that, you can run or race, and when you feel tired, you can switch to walking and back when you are ready.
2. You should not push yourself to 100% here during the test but maintain an intensity of 80%. Check the time you take to complete the 2.4 km, your benchmark.
3. For example, if you meet 2.4 km in 25 mins and when you repeat the test after six weeks and complete the 2.4kms in 20 mins, that shows a clear sign of improvement in your cardiovascular fitness.

This test can be used for benchmarking and measuring progress, as discussed above.

Training Plan For Beginners For Cardiovascular Fitness:

When starting your fitness journey, paying attention to all aspects of fitness is essential and not get fixated on just one key result. This helps in the overall development and preparation for the subsequent phases of your fitness journey.

1. An excellent way to start is to do three full-body days a week of moderate-intensity strength training (30-45mins) with 2-3 sessions of cardiovascular activity (30mins each). This can be mixed or can be on separate days.
2. When choosing your exercises, selecting the regressions and not the advanced variations you would typically see on social media is essential. This way, you could learn the movement correctly while making it equally compelling.
3. An excellent way to begin would be to do 4-5 exercises daily with three sets of each exercise split between upper body, lower body movements and core exercises for three days a week and two 30 min moderate intensity cardio activities like brisk walking, jogging or swimming in individual days or after the strength training session.

This sort of plan will help develop your cardiovascular system while also ensuring you learn movement and become functional and robust.