While it's important to strength train regularly as this form of exercise helps people to build and maintain muscle mass, improve functional fitness and can boost the metabolism — it is not the only way to move your body. That's why we are bringing a low-impact cardio routine to your attention today.
Low-impact cardio is important because it provides cardiovascular benefits while minimizing stress on the joints, reducing the risk of injury, and making it suitable for individuals who suffer from joint issues or those recovering from injury.
Crafted by fitness coach Britany Williams, this routine is tailored to gently yet efficiently torch fat and engage your core muscles along the way. It doesn't require any gym equipment so you can perform this wherever you feel most comfortable working out.
All you will need access to complete the workout is a chair to work against in a few of the moves and one of the best yoga mats, especially if you want to provide some extra cushioning for your joints as you exercise.
What is the cardio workout?
It's a low-impact, no jumping cardio workout. Williams has strung together seven exercises and provided demonstrations, which you can view below. To keep things simple and efficient she recommends selecting five exercises to focus on.
Once you have picked out five moves, you will perform each exercise for 40 seconds and allow yourself 20 seconds to rest before moving on to the next one.
You have the option to perform three or four rounds of the full routine. Whichever you opt for, make sure to leave a minute's rest in-between each round — this will help you maintain intensity and performance throughout the entire workout.
While low-impact exercises may not involve the same intensity as high-impact circuits, they still provide significant calorie-burning benefits. By engaging in sustained movements that elevate the heart rate, you can effectively burn calories and promote fat loss over time.
As we briefly touched on before, low-impact cardio workouts offer versatility and accessibility, making them suitable for individuals of all fitness levels and ages. Whether performed at home, in a gym, or outdoors, these workouts require minimal equipment and space, making them convenient and easy to integrate into daily life.
Additionally, low-impact exercises can be modified to accommodate individual fitness levels and goals, allowing beginners to gradually build up their fitness and endurance while providing more advanced options for those with more experience. For the latter, you may wish to incorporate some of the best adjustable dumbbells into the routine if you want to add some extra resistance and intensity.
But if this style of low-impact cardio is your preferred state of exercise, you can continue to progress your fitness by gradually increasing the intensity, duration, or complexity of your exercises over time. This can be achieved by incorporating incremental changes such as increasing the resistance, speed, or range of motion in your movements, or adding variations and progressions to your routine.
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