Is your heart pounding in anticipation of your upcoming aerobics class? Keep at it because your beating heart means you're doing it right.Aerobics classes for women can make you heart healthy, sculpt the body beautifully and improve your quality of life.
Since the first aerobics classes danced into our lives in the late 1960s, women have been moving to a music beat, burning fat, upping cardio health and sculpting the body beautiful. There’s something about movement and music that turns exercise into a leisure activity, helping us to forget (at times) the pure torture of it.
The cardio benefits
Yes, aerobics classes for women offer all kinds of health benefits through non-stop movement, but chief among these is cardiovascular improvement. Cardio boosts your heart health, with a lower resting rate and an increased capacity to do work. It also improves cholesterol levels and the body’s ability to metabolize sugars.
Take it fast or slow
In getting your cardio system working, and fat burning off, aerobics workouts can either be aerobic or anaerobic. Aerobic is a light to moderate sustained effort (typically about 65 to 80 per cent of your maximum heart rate), while anaerobic is a shorter but more explosive effort, such as power sprints or heavy weightlifting.
So ask yourself, do you want to go intense, or do you believe that slow and steady wins the race?
What else can aerobics do for you?
Whether you go fast or slow, your aerobics classes can transform other aspects of your physical and mental health. For example, studies show that this kind of exercise can reverse the trend to losing bone mineral density in aging, especially amongst post-menopausal women.
Other studies show that it can also help to overcome fatigue and improve mood, decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease and significantly reduce that oh-so-hard-to-lose abdominal fat.
Aerobics and pregnancy
The ability of aerobics to improve heart and lung health and muscle tone can be enjoyed by expectant mothers. However, moms-to-be should concentrate on low-impact exercises (no jumping, high kicks or fast running) and always keep one foot on the ground to minimize joint stress.
Speak to your aerobics instructor and he or she will be able to suggest how to modify movements of exercises to suit your condition. You can also find classes designed specifically for expectant mothers, so you can work out with others facing the same challenges (and joys).
For later in life, too
If you’re post-menopausal, you can benefit from aerobic exercise as much as younger women do. A 2006 study conducted by the University of California Berkeley looking at women with an average age of 55 showed that they can enjoy a reduced resting heart rate, improvements in body shape, increased mobility, reduced joint pain and a boost in energy after only 12 weeks of daily aerobic exercise.
