Starting or revamping a fitness routine can seem daunting. But having a toolbox of practical, engaging cardio workouts makes it easy to get moving and boost your overall health. Incorporating cardio into your regular regimen delivers incredible benefits, such as improved heart health, increased calorie burn, reduced stress, and elevated energy levels.
Let’s explore 12 of the best cardio workout options to supercharge your fitness journey. With a mix of high-intensity and steady-state activities, you’ll discover dynamic new ways to challenge your cardiovascular fitness, burn calories, and take your workouts to the next level.
The Importance of Cardio for Overall Fitness
Before diving into specific workouts, let’s review why cardio is vital to any fitness program. At its core, cardio exercise trains your heart, lungs, and circulatory system to pump more efficiently. This allows your body to take in oxygen and circulate blood more effectively to fuel working muscles and organs.
Regular cardio workouts provide numerous science-backed health benefits, such as;
- Strengthens the heart muscle and improves blood flow
- Reduces blood pressure and cholesterol
- Burns significant calories to help manage weight
- Elevates mood through endorphin release
- Increases lung capacity and endurance
- Reduces stress and anxiety
- Boosts energy levels
Mixing up your cardio routine with various heart-pumping activities keeps your program engaging and provides a full-body workout. Let’s explore some seriously effective options.
12 Cardio Workouts for a Stronger Heart and Leaner Body
Here are cardiovascular workouts to start right away.
1. High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
HIIT workouts involve alternating bursts of intense exertion with periods of low to moderate intensity or complete rest. The intensity spikes rev up your heart rate and metabolism while the rest intervals allow you to sustain the efforts.
How to perform the HIITs.
- Try sprint intervals – 20 seconds of all-out sprinting followed by 10 seconds of jogging, repeated for 10-15 minutes total.
- Or choose bodyweight exercises like jumping jacks, squats, and push-ups, which should be done at high intensity for 30 seconds with 30 seconds of rest.
Jumping Jacks
Jumping jacks are a classic cardio exercise that boosts heart rate fast while engaging the whole body. This is how you do jumping jacks.
- Standing with feet together and arms at your sides, simultaneously jump your feet out wide as you raise your hands overhead into a star shape.
- Jump back to the starting position and repeat continuously for 30-90 seconds.
Jumping jacks improve cardiovascular endurance, coordination, and agility. The full-body explosive movement burns calories quickly.
Start with basic two-foot jumping jacks, then advance to crossing one foot in front of the other at the top for an added balance challenge. Take them at high intensity during HIIT intervals or keep them low impact for active recovery during circuit training.
Squats
Squats strengthen and tone the glutes, quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves while providing an effective cardio blast when performed at high reps or in a circuit.
Here is how we’re doing the squats.
- Stand with feet shoulder-width apart.
- Bend knees and push hips back as if sitting in a chair, keeping knees behind toes.
- Descend until your thighs are parallel to the floor.
- Power back up to standing and repeat.
You can use bodyweight or hold dumbbells at your sides for added resistance.
Try squat jumps to integrate more explosive cardio.
- Perform 15-30 reps for 1-3 sets mixed with other exercises for a heart-pumping circuit.
- Keep your chest lifted and core engaged throughout the movement.
Squats build functional lower body strength, perfect for soccer.
Push-Ups
Traditional push-ups act as cardio workouts and strength training by simultaneously working the chest, shoulders, triceps, and core.
Here is a step-by-step push-up process.
- Go down on all fours.
- Place your hands shoulder-width apart on the floor and extend your legs straight back, balancing on your toes.
- Keeping your body straight, bend your elbows and lower chest towards the floor.
- Press back up to start the plank position and repeat.
For added cardio intensity, do push-ups at a rapid pace for 30-60 seconds or incorporate them into high-intensity intervals. Modify elevation to increase or decrease difficulty.
Push-ups boost upper body endurance, sculpt the arms, and challenge balance and stabilization all at once.
These three HIIT cardio workouts effectively torch calories and improve cardiovascular fitness.
2. Running
Nothing provides great cardio workouts quite like running. It exercises your entire body while building powerful leg muscles. Vary your runs by mixing long, slow distances, intervals, hill repeats, and Fartleks (random speed play). Running outside adds varied terrain and scenery that make the miles fly by.
3. Cycling
Cycling delivers a top-notch cardio session, whether you hop on a road bike outdoors or grab a spin bike at the gym. It engages the major leg muscle groups and provides low-impact joint conditioning. Interval training or sustained efforts up hills are great for boosting your fitness.
4. Jumping Rope
It may seem simple, but jumping rope is one of the most effective cardio workouts out there. Coordinating the jumps engages your whole body while providing a serious heart-pumping workout. Jumping rope improves foot speed, agility, balance, and coordination. Bring this inexpensive piece of equipment anywhere for an anytime blast of cardio.
5. Dance Workouts
Dancing makes getting your cardio workouts way more fun. Zumba, hip hop, Latin, dance aerobics, and other dance-inspired workouts feel more like a party than exercise. You’ll improve your coordination and burn many calories while busting moves to energizing music.
6. Boxing/Kickboxing
Unleash your inner fighter while torching calories with boxing and kickboxing workouts. Throwing punches, kicks, and knee strikes boosts heart rate while honing coordination. Add agility drills like shuffling and ducking, and you have one fierce cardio workout. Use a heavy bag, speed bag, jump rope, and shadowboxing to mix it up.
7. Swimming
Dive into swimming for an efficient full-body cardio workout that goes easy on the joints. Incorporating different strokes like freestyle, backstroke, and butterfly engages all your major muscle groups. Interval swims and kicking sets will skyrocket your heart rate. Swimming boosts lung capacity and endurance while building lean muscle.
8. Rowing
Rowing machines provide an intense cardio challenge that works not just on your legs but also on your abs, back, arms, and shoulders. Sit tall and drive with the legs before leaning back and pulling the handles to engage your entire body in a fluid motion. Increase resistance for tough intervals or row moderately for steady-state fat burning.
9. Burpees
Capable of skyrocketing heart rates fast, burpees are one of the most effective full-body cardio workouts and strength exercises.
How do you do burpees?
- From a standing position, drop into a squat, kick your feet back into plank position, perform a push-up, kick your feet back in, and explode back up to standing.
- The rapid transitions jack up the intensity.
- Shoot for 10-20 rep sets with little rest.
Here is a short video to help you with the same because it can be quite tricky.
10. Stair Climbing
Skip the elevator and hit the stairs for an accessible yet highly effective cardio workout. Climbing stairs engages all the major leg muscles and skyrockets your heart rate. For variation, add lateral shuffles, grapevine steps, and backward climbs.
Lateral shuffles add a side-to-side motion as you climb. Step up sideways with one foot first, then close with the other foot. Repeat this by facing the other direction in the next step.
For grapevine steps, step up sideways with one foot, then cross the other foot behind or in front before stepping up. This crosses your feet across the midline while climbing for greater coordination and range of motion.
Finally, backward climbs work the front of your legs and test your balance. Carefully walk up the steps backward, engaging your core and keeping one hand on the railing.
Combining all directions of motion, lateral hops, and crossover steps will take your stair workout to the next level. The increased lateral movement and reversed positioning challenge your body in new ways for an intense, well-rounded burn. Your heart rate will spike while your balance and proprioception improve. You can track flights, time, or calories burned.
11. Battle Ropes
Not just for strongmen, battle rope workouts deliver intense full-body cardio workout training. Waves, alternating waves, slams, and circles with these heavy ropes will leave your muscles pumped and your heart racing. Engage your core and go at maximum intensity for 10-30-second bursts.
12. Aerobic Step Workout
Step routines involve following choreographed movements up and down on a rectangular platform. The variety of high-energy steps, tapouts, and jumps provided a challenging lower-body cardio workout session.
Find step classes for motivation and structure. You can also create your own routine at home.
Wrapping Up
It’s key to mix up your cardio workouts to prevent boredom and overload specific muscles. Have fun discovering new activities you enjoy that keep your cardiovascular system challenged.
With consistency, your fitness level and overall health will thrive.
