The best cardio exercises are something you enjoy so you’ll stick to it to get the maximum benefits. You may be surprised at how quickly this form of physical activity becomes a habit you enjoy.

Exercise and cardiovascular fitness exercises are great for your health but the best cardio exercises get you to your ideal target heart rate as you exercise.

To test your heart rate while exercising place your thumb on the underside of your wrist to locate your pulse. Count the heart beats for fifteen seconds and multiply that number times four.

That number is your heart rate. To calculate your ideal target heart rate, subtract your age from two hundred and twenty.

Everyone has their own preference of exercise, but these exercises below will get you to your ideal target heart rate and are some of the best cardio exercises.

Walking As Exercise

Walking as exercise fits well into most lifestyles and is something anyone can do at any age. Start out walking at a medium pace and end up walking briskly so you can get to your ideal target heart rate.

Walk where you climb slight grades to increase resistance which will increase your heart rate. Not only will walking as exercise make you feel good it’s one of the best cardio exercises to do with a friend.

Bicycling Exercise

Bicycling exercise also offers no age barriers and people at almost any fitness level can enjoy it. The benefit of bicycling exercise is it builds your strength and agility.

Like walking, to get to your ideal target heart rate, find slight grades to ride on to increase resistance. Bicycling exercise is not only one of the best cardio exercises it’s not likely that you’ll ever get bored.

Swimming Pool Workout

A swimming pool workout is ideal for a full body exercise and cardiovascular fitness. Exercise in water is easy on the joints because the water supports you and water also provides a natural resistance.

To keep your workout balanced, swim laps using different strokes to vary the muscles you work. A swimming pool workout is one of the best cardio exercises because it gets you to your ideal target heart rate quickly.

Elliptical Exercise

Working out on an elliptical exerciser is one of the best cardio exercises available. Like a swimming pool workout, elliptical exercise is ideal for a full body exercise and cardiovascular fitness.

The motion of elliptical exercise feels very natural and compliments normal body movements making it feel like the workout is easier. Elliptical exercise creates a safe workout because it reduces the harmful stress and impact on your muscles and joints.

The duration of any cardiovascular fitness exercise should be a minimum of twenty minutes and up to sixty minutes. Test your heart rate while exercising and calculate your ideal target heart rate.

To get to your ideal target heart rate just adjust your speed or resistance. That way you get the highest possible benefit and the best cardio exercise possible.

This article is supplied by http://www.treadmill-info.com.

Do you want a huge upper body? Maybe you have trained for months and years and just have not gotten the results that you have been wanting. But never fear because I am here to tell you just how to build the upper body muscle mass that you have always dreamed of. In this article I will tell you what muscle groups that you will need to work out so that you can achieve your dream body.

Although you may want to get huge arms, you will look more then stupid if you have chicken legs and you will get laughed at. So before you go and work out only your arms six days a week let me let you in on a little secret. If you want a super hot upper body then you have to train your lower body. The perfect body is called the X frame. If you think about what an X looks like then you can imagine what you want your body to look like. When training your legs and lower body you are also building muscle mass in your back and your abs very important if you want to build upper body muscle mass.

You also need to train your back many people just focus on there arms to get a great upper body but you back is very important to get that winged look and develop your rear deltoid and trapezius muscles. This is very important when building muscle mass so that your overall image of your upper body will appear huge.

You need to also work out your deltoids many people just work out there front deltoids when actually your deltoid muscle has three heads so when you work out all three your shoulders will become huge and well defined and appear almost boulder like. This is great for your upper body image.

Do not forget your chest. If you have a little chest and big arms then you will look funny as well. Use incline benches to really work out your chest instead of flat ones, using and incline will really work out your chest, also use dumbbells barbells and cable machines to achieve a great chest.

So now you know how to build upper body muscle mass, and it may be easier then you had once thought. You see the secret is in the rest of the body. To get a great upper body you need to workout the lower body. Many people may not know this but all of your muscle groups work together to give you a huge powerful body.

Mike Parker reveals what women really want at his how to build up upper body muscle mass website for ways to build muscle and attract women.

The No Cardio Question Answered

Certainly there are many people who only do weights and no cardio and probably just as many, maybe more that do cardio and no weight training.

It’s true that lots of people hate cardio exercise but not everyone does.  Lots of people absolutely love it – even really high intensity cardio.  To say everyone loves weight training is just as incorrect.

Not everyone enjoys weight training; otherwise nearly everyone would be doing it.  They might enjoy going through the motions of weight training and using light weights but that’s not real muscle building weight training.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s better that people at least did light resistance training than none at all, but weight training that builds strength and muscle requires that the muscles be progressively overloaded.  That means heavier weight or more reps or slower reps to increase the intensity of the weight training exercise.

Likewise, when it comes to cardio exercise, the cardio exercise that produces the results is the type that gets you breathing hard, your heart pumping and your endurance muscles tiring.  This is the level of cardio referred to when people say they hate cardio.

Anything less is generally what you see all those fat people in the gym doing while they’re pedalling away on the exercise bikes.

As for cardio making you hungry, well so does weight training.

Now it is true that you can lose weight without cardio.  You can also lose weight without resistance exercise.  You can also lose weight without fancy fad diets.   All you really need is a calorie deficit.  In other words, expend more calories than you eat.  Everyone knows the easiest way to achieve that is by cutting the food intake.  This of course has the danger of the body slipping into starvation mode and the lowering of the metabolism, thus making weight loss even harder and future weight gain more likely.

To counter this of course, weight training can be used to stimulate the metabolism and preserve, maybe even build the lean muscle tissue.

It should be abundantly clear by now that starvation diets are definitely NOT the best way to lose weight healthily and permanently.

The best approach to achieving the required calorie deficit is to increase activity to burn more energy.  Any increase in activity whether by cardio exercise of weight training exercise will result in you wanting to eat more.

This is not necessarily a bad thing.  Eating more requires that more energy be expended to digest the food.  If you follow the rule of eating your food over 4-6 smaller but more frequent meals, you will be increasing your metabolic rate, which of course increases the fat burning even when not exercising.

Eating proteins and complex carbohydrates which take more energy to digest helps as well.  Plenty of water is important for fat metabolism as well so there are many factors which come into play.

Basically though if you exercise more you eat more, you gain more muscle, burn more fat and get healthier more efficiently.

There will always be a procession of so called ‘experts’ who make some sensational claim like build great abs in 5 minutes a day or lose weight without cardio or by drinking some special formula.  Their sensational claims are designed to suck in the confused, misinformed and desperate dieters who want everything the easiest way possible.

In answer to the question, ’should we forget about cardio?’ the answer is a resounding NO.

Any cardio helps create the caloric deficit by burning off energy.  High intensity cardio burns even more and also helps raise the metabolism.  Also, how can we ignore the other health benefits derived from cardio exercise?

The human body is designed for work.  That means strength workouts with weights and cardio-vascular workouts that strengthen the heart and lungs.  Such work means greater health and longevity.

Weights rule – but cardio exercise is a winning partner.  Hand in hand they take the podium together.

Alwyn Beikoff (http://www.BodyMindUnlimited.com) is an educator and personal performance coach who helps people the world over to change the way they think and create the body and life they desire.