How can I do endurance training without straining my legs or knees?
When you think of endurance training, you usually think of extensive running training or cycling units. Even if it is difficult to imagine, exercises that only target the upper body muscles can also be done as endurance training. The main component is the permanent load when the heart rate increases.
For example, pedals could be driven with the arms, rowing exercises in a fixed seat or strength exercises with minimal weights could be performed. The decisive advantage offered by the lower body muscles is that the muscles here are larger and therefore do not tire as quickly. However, if a weak load on knees and legs is possible, either cycling or swimming can be advised.
What are the effects of endurance training on blood pressure, heart rate and blood lipids?
As already mentioned in the above sections, endurance training has positive effects on the athlete’s cardiovascular system. The systolic blood pressure value is lowered because the resistance in the blood vessels of the body decreases. The heart does not have to pump with so much force (pressure) against the resistance in the body.
The heart rate at rest and under stress decreases. As the heart gets bigger, it can circulate more blood volume. In order to pump the same amount of blood per time, it therefore needs fewer heartbeats per time unit (heart rate).
Studies also show that endurance training helps to lower LDL cholesterol and provide more HDL cholesterol in return. This also shifts the ratio of LDL cholesterol to HDL cholesterol in favour of HDL. The lower this quotient, the lower the susceptibility to a heart attack or stroke.
Endurance training and fat burning
Endurance training that makes a decisive contribution to fat burning is probably undisputed today. However, the decisive factor in this formula is the oxygen uptake capacity. The greater this is, the more oxygen can be made available to the muscle, which can then burn fats to produce energy, the so-called lipolysis.
This is because, unlike the metabolism of carbohydrates, the metabolism of fats can only succeed if sufficient oxygen is available. Therefore it is also important to do endurance sports below the anaerobic threshold, provided that fat burning is the declared goal. But what does endurance training have to do with this?
To put it in simple terms from the beginning of the article: endurance training ensures that you do not get out of breath so quickly. It increases our lung volumes and allows oxygenated blood to flow better through the human body, making more oxygen available to the muscle, which can then be used to burn fat.
