Cardiovascular Workout Schedules

Cardiovascular workouts help build the heart into a strong muscle while helping the body reduce fat, increase metabolism and ease stress. For a workout to be considered a cardiovascular (cardio) workout, you must raise your heart rate an average of 30 beats per minute. While cardio workouts can involve the same workout, many people enjoy cross training for full-body benefits and to prevent boredom.

  1. Three a Week

    • A basic cardio workout schedule is to work out three times per week doing at least 20 minutes of a cardio activity per workout. This may involve walking, jogging or cycling. This should be something that a person enjoys doing and can do for at least 20 minutes.

    Cross Training

    • Cross training takes the cardio workout and intermixes several activities. A person may do jogging on day one, swimming on day two and a cardio class on day three. Many people prefer changing the activities for a couple reasons. The first is that it prevents people from getting bored with the workout and thus complacent. Running the same 2 miles in the same time frame for 3 months may not be raising the heart rate 30 beats anymore. The second reason is to prevent overuse injuries from repeated activities.

    Building Up

    • When a person begins a cardio workout schedule, it may be frustrating. The reason is that goals are set higher than the body is capable of doing. After training for a month or even weeks, the body is able to attain more. The goal when starting a cardio workout is to simply get out and do something. Even if a person can't run around the block without stopping, he should run as far as possible then walk the remainder as quickly as possible. Do as much as possible and try to extend it with every workout, if only by feet.

    Beyond Three Times Per Week

    • Once a person becomes cardio trained, meaning the body is accustomed to the workout and raising the heart level, the workout can become addicting. People seek the workout daily as a stress release with natural endorphins providing a high that keeps people coming back for more. In spite of the good feelings and benefits from a daily workout, a person should have at least 1 day of rest per week to allow the body to rejuvenate. Mix weight training in as well to increase muscle mass, lower fat content and improve performance and health.