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.

Aerobic Activity For Healthy Body Tissue

Aerobic activity is necessary to grow, repair and maintain healthy body tissue. Every cell in your body is constantly at work. Before you were born your body was producing new cells at the rate of 15,000 each minute, and eventually you reached a total of 50 trillion cells (assuming that you are a normal-sized adult). New cell material is constantly replacing old and damaged material. The effects of aging appear when the cells are not able to reproduce themselves fast enough to repair damaged body tissues.

Every tissue in your body is made up of specialized cells for specific bodily functions. Each specialized cell is a sophisticated factory that performs very complex functions as it processes nutrients and minerals to produce new cell material, and for this process there must be an abundant supply of oxygen. Oxygen and nutrients must arrive at the cells in correct proportions. Without enough oxygen to assimilate them, nutrients cannot be processed and will be eliminated from your system unused. Aerobic activity helps your body to optimize its oxygen intake so that there will always be an ample supply to assimilate its nutrition.

Without aerobic activity your body's oxygen supply is depleted. Minerals and nutrition in your system will be wasted, leading to premature aging. Ligaments turn weak and are easily torn. Muscles turn lax and fill with fat. Bones become brittle. Both the blood and the bones need an abundant supply of calcium, but the blood needs it more. If the blood is not able to assimilate enough calcium from its nutrition because of an inadequate oxygen supply, the blood will actually steal the calcium it needs from the bones, making them fragile and leading to osteoporosis.

Since aerobic activity tends to optimize the oxygen supply of the entire body, there is no tissue in the body that does not benefit. Of course, no amount of aerobic activity can completely stop the process of natural aging, but the enriched oxygen supply produced by aerobic activity can, in most cases, slow the aging process down considerably. And in some cases, the deteriorating effects of aging can be reversed. Increased oxygen can tone muscles and make them lean and more elastic. An adequate oxygen supply can optimize the body's ability to absorb nutrition and minerals like calcium so that the blood doesn't have to steal minerals from the bones. The result can be greater bone density.

Have you ever heard of a hyperbaric chamber? A person is sealed into a hyperbaric chamber which is filled with pure oxygen, and the pressure is increased to two or three times the normal level. Pure oxygen under high pressure saturates the body. This stimulates the body to repair damaged tissues very quickly. Some hospitals put patients into these hyperbaric chambers after surgery to greatly speed the rate of healing, and it also reduces the danger of infections. Some professional football teams use these hyperbaric chambers to make their injured players heal much more rapidly.

Unfortunately, most people can't afford a hyperbaric chamber of their own. And even if they could, spending your whole day inside a hyperbaric chamber is a bit impractical. Although aerobic activity cannot match the performance of a hyperbaric chamber which feeds pure oxygen to the body under high pressure, aerobic activity does enhance the body's oxygen supply to some degree, and this promotes the healing of body tissue much better than an inactive person with a depleted oxygen supply.