Maintain Body Fitness with Aerobics

Want your body and bones to stay strong? Whatever your age, doing aerobic exercise regularly can bring many benefits to stimulate the heart rate, breathing, and good for your heart. Basically, all activities that use oxygen to burn calories in producing energy and increase heart rate can be called aerobic exercise. But in Indonesia, aerobics is often synonymous with gymnastics. Aerobic exercise is a series of movements that activate the muscles of the body. If done regularly and consistently, this activity turns out to bring many benefits.

What are the benefits of aerobics?

Aerobic or cardio exercises are some form of activity that aims to increase heart rate for a certain duration. Aerobics are useful in increasing the flow of oxygen to the muscles and heart. The more oxygen that enters, the more healthy the body becomes. This is how the body responds to aerobic exercise that you do, including:

• Aerobics makes it easier for you to breathe longer and deeper, thereby increasing oxygen levels in the blood, muscles, and heart. This increase will make blood vessels dilate and the body more easily emit exhaust gases, such as carbon dioxide and lactic acid.
• The heart will beat faster so that it can pump blood to the muscles and return to the lungs better.
• Aeorobics make your body release endorphins, which act as natural painkillers, make the heart happy and improve mood.
• Strengthens the heart and lungs by increasing blood flow to the two organs.
• Improve the efficiency of blood circulation and reduce blood pressure.
• Increase the number of red blood cells in the body. These cells play a role in channeling oxygen throughout the body and carrying carbon dioxide from tissues to the lungs.

When combined with a healthy diet and adequate rest, aerobic exercise has the potential to bring many benefits to everyday health. Among them:

• Increases stamina and the immune system thereby reducing the risk of illness, especially influenza infections such as colds.
• Maintain ideal body weight.
• Make the body not easily tired.
• Increase the ability of muscles to burn fat during movement. This exercise is also best done as a sport to shrink the stomach.

If done regularly in the long run, aerobic exercise also plays a role in reducing the risk of certain chronic conditions. The condition of coronary heart disease can improve if you do aerobic exercise regularly. Aerobic exercise can also prevent clogging of blood vessels by increasing high cholesterol levels (high-density lipoprotein / HDL) and suppressing bad cholesterol levels (low-density lipoprotein / LDL). Besides helping to control blood pressure and blood sugar levels, aerobic exercise also decreases your risk of various diseases, especially obesity, type 2 diabetes, stroke, some cancers, and osteoporosis. Doing aerobic exercise is not only beneficial for the body, but also for mental health. Aerobic exercise for 30 minutes and three times a week has been shown to reduce cognitive decline in the elderly. Besides reducing the risk of depression and anxiety by making the mind more relaxed, aerobic exercise makes the mind stay sharp as you get older. Furthermore, as a result of all the benefits above, those who do this activity are more likely to live longer than those who rarely exercise.

Do Aerobic Exercise Properly

Which is better, doing 30 minutes of aerobic exercise every day or one hour three times a week? The study found that aerobic exercise that is done in a long duration but less frequently, brings less benefits than that done in a shorter but more frequent time. But the most important thing is to make aerobics as part of daily life and lifestyle. However, excessive aerobic exercise is also not good for your body. In addition, too often doing aerobic exercise can cause several symptoms such as fatigue, sleep disturbance, and heart palpitations at rest. By joining a fitness center, your training will be more directed with the help of an instructor. In addition, the many colleagues who are eager to practice make you feel not alone in achieving health goals. For those of you who don't have enough time to go to the fitness center, aerobics can also be done at home. At least, start aerobics with heating for about six minutes. Warming up or stretching before and cooling down after doing aerobic exercise, serves to reduce injury and increase the body's readiness to make movements.

Perform Simple Aerobics at Home

The following are some series of aerobic exercise that can be done alone at home.

• Rocket jump

Stand slightly bent with both legs slightly opened. Bend your knees slightly. Place both palms on the thighs. Jump with your hands straight up, and straighten your legs. Land slowly. Then position the body back to the position before jumping. Do two sets with 15-25 repetitions.

• Squat jump

Stand up straight, tighten your stomach and straighten your back. Then squat down by pushing your buttocks back as if you were about to sit and your back is still straight as if it were at a 45 degree angle. Arms are on the right side of the knee. Jump up high with your arms outstretched to the right and left and legs wide open. Land lightly with your back bent and your hands on the left and right sides of the knee. Do two series each with 15-25 repetitions.

• Squat

With your feet shoulder width apart, extend your arms forward and lower your thighs and buttocks until you reach the position of someone sitting in a chair, with your thighs parallel to the floor. Keep your back straight at a 45 degree angle, hands straight forward. Repeat these movements 15-25 times.

• Burpee

  Done with a series of movements as follows:
  - From a standing position, take a squat position with both hands holding the floor.- Then straighten both legs back with both hands fixed on the floor, forming a push-up position.- Quickly, return to the squatting position without changing the position of the hands, then stand with both hands reaching up.
  - Repeat this movement 15-25 times.

If you have not been doing regular exercise for a long time and want to do aerobic exercise, start with a mild duration and intensity. For example doing five minutes of movement in the morning, then the next 2-3 days increase to 10 minutes, and so on. But if you have a chronic illness, consult your doctor before exercising. For example, if you have arthritis, you need to ask how you can continue to do aerobic exercises that are safe for your condition. It is never too late. Whatever your goals, ranging from losing weight, keeping your body healthy, to reducing your risk of stress, aerobics can provide benefits if done routinely and regularly.