To Your Health

To your Health: Cardio

Jul 26, 2022 | 1:13 PM

PRINCE GEORGE—To get your heart pumping is the goal. Cardio lowers your risk of a whole host of conditions, but what is cardio?

“Cardio is any kind of mono-structural movement that you can do at a low to high intensity to use oxygen as the primary driver of energy in your body. So running, biking, swimming, rowing, burpees, anything that is not overly explosive that you can just do over and over and over again,” said Stephen O’Beirne, Owner of Crossfit Northern Ice.

Why is cardio so important to overall health?

“Having a strong cardiovascular system helps prevent lifestyle illnesses such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension, all the stuff that happens to us when we don’t move. You know, you are guaranteed to get sick if you’re not moving. It’s only a matter of time, but if you work at that cardiovascular system, you go for walks every day, you run every day, swim every day, you do something,” said O’Beirne.

Doing cardio is not just about avoiding the bad stuff. It also has many benefits that you may enjoy.

“Some of the biggest positives you’re going to have from doing cardio is quite simply, you’re going to feel better. You’re going to look better. You’re going to enjoy life more. You’re going to want to do more. You’re going to want to be more involved. All those people you see in your man, you’re so lucky that you did that. They’re not lucky. They just work on being healthy and strong, and it gives them the opportunity when things come up to take advantage of how you can Ishan Link or go on a hip hop mountain or doing all of these taking advantage of this beautiful, beautiful northern community that we live in,” said O’Beirne.

Cardio is a very wide-ranging category of exercise and for different people mean different things.

“So for somebody that might be just going for a short walk every day, for somebody who might have to run five, eight, ten kilometers, right? So all those things running, biking, swimming, anything that your body is doing that you can do over and over for an extended period of time to get you to that point where you using oxygen as that primary driver,” said O’Beirne.