Aerobic Activity For Muscle Tone

Aerobic activity is very different from other kinds of exercises like push-ups, sit-ups, and weight lifting. Those exercises have their place, but their value is limited because they only target a few muscles. They build bulk especially on the arms and chest, and they make you look very impressive, but what about the heart, the lungs, and the digestive core muscles?

If you do weight lifting (as I also do), I hope that's not all you do. If done alone without aerobic activity, muscle-building exercises can actually be harmful because they increase the number of muscle cells without increasing the capacity of the heart and lungs to supply those new muscle cells with the oxygen they need. As a result, some impressive body builders die prematurely of heart failure.

In order for aerobic activity to be effective, there must be sustained physical exertion that makes you breathe hard over a sustained period of time. Body building exercises like push-ups, sit-ups, and weight lifting make you breath hard, but they don't last long. When you lift weights (depending on how much you lift), you can exhaust yourself in less than a minute. As a result your arm and chest muscles are developed, but your heart and lungs are not. Your arms are stronger, but in normal activity you are more fatigued because your heart and lungs have to work overtime.

Aerobic Activity for an extended period of 20 to 30 minutes (the more the better) forces the heart to tone itself and grow new tissue so that it can deliver more oxygen enriched blood with less effort. The lungs are conditioned to expand to a greater capacity so that the body can assimilate more oxygen. Blood vessels expand and become more elastic and reduce the build up of plaque so that there is less resistance to the work of the heart and the flow of blood. The body even grows new blood vessels between the muscle fibers so that oxygen can be delivered more efficiently to the muscles and to other tissues. The result is less fatigue and perhaps even more years added to a person's life.

Different forms of aerobic activity tend to target and tone different areas of the body. Cycling and walking are especially good to tone and strengthen the leg muscles. Canoeing and swimming are especially good to strengthen and tone the arms and the upper body. I like jogging because it tones everything. But whatever type of aerobic activity you choose, it will bring benefit to every muscle and every system and every tissue because aerobic activity will optimize the blood-oxygen supply of the entire body.

There are all kinds of aerobic activity to choose from - biking, jogging, canoeing, or swimming, just to name a few. If you find an activity that you like, you might not even realize that you are working! I recommend doing some kind of aerobic activity three or four times a week that raises your heart rate to about 150 beats per minute for about 30 minutes each session. If you are not accustomed to aerobic activity you will want to start out slow at first and eventually work up to that goal. It will be hard at first, but eventually your efforts will reward you with rich results. Who knows? You might be adding time to your life every time you exercise.