Anaerobic exercise is often more intense than aerobic exercise, but often a shorter duration workout. People tend to interchange the term ‘aerobic exercise’ with ‘cardio’, while anaerobic exercise can be something like weightlifting, strength training, or yoga.
Anaerobic exercise causes your body to demand more energy than your aerobic system can supply. This type of exercise breaks down glucose in the body for energy without using oxygen. Anaerobic means, “without oxygen”. Aerobic exercise, on the other hand, generates energy by utilizing a constant supply of oxygen to maintain the present level of activity without the need for more energy from a different source.
Aerobic exercise includes cardio such as running, swimming or endurance cycling. Workouts that emphasize anaerobic exercise, however, include high-intensity interval training (HIIT), jump rope, circuit training and interval training.
One of the most well-known anaerobic workout benefits is that it aids in the development of lean muscle mass while also improving endurance and fitness.
Exercise-induced increases in lean muscle mass aid to enhance metabolism and counteract weariness. It also aids in the reduction of body fat, which is an important component for those attempting to lose weight. Below are 5 health benefits of anaerobic exercise:
1. Anaerobic Exercise Boosts Your Overall Athleticism
Anaerobic training improves your general athleticism and performance. This includes your speed, agility, strength and endurance. Your anaerobic capacity, or your body’s ability to generate short-term power from non-oxygen pathways, is what has allowed you to finish strong in those relay races, sports games, or bicycle sessions.
Your body’s ability to produce energizing power grows swiftly as a result of pushing it to its maximum capacity during high-intensity exercise, which improves your athleticism. Because anaerobic exercise is intense, operating at maximum effort for short bursts of time reduces the body’s recovery period. This increases your total endurance, since being able to sustain challenging exercise for brief bursts correlates to being able to sustain moderately paced exercise for longer periods of time.
2. Increases Metabolism
Muscle tissue consumes more calories than fat. You will develop hungry tissue by increasing your muscle mass through anaerobic workouts. Your metabolism is boosted when you have more muscle tissue. Muscles are also hungrier in the hours after high-intensity anaerobic exercise.
Because your body is burning energy without oxygen during anaerobic activity, it reaches into your glycogen stores and consumes glucose. Strength training and other anaerobic exercises help you grow muscle, which helps your body burn more calories during rest. All of this contributes to a faster metabolism. Anaerobic exercise boosts the body’s glycogen storage capacity, giving you more energy for physical activities. This will help you improve your athletic abilities.
Lactate levels rise as a result of anaerobic metabolism, which can be a sign of inadequate cardiac output. Other indications of decreased perfusion must be considered when interpreting a high lactate level. Increased glycogenolysis or inborn metabolic inefficiencies can result in a high lactate level in isolation.
3. Muscle Soreness and Blood Sugar Levels Are Reduced
The food you eat is converted into sugar by your body. Unused food is either burned right away, stored as fat in the body, or stored as glycogen in the muscles. Regular anaerobic activity helps your body stay healthy by regulating insulin levels by burning stored glycogen. This will help you avoid blood sugar spikes.
Post-exercise soreness is an unavoidable side effect of starting an anaerobic exercise program. However, muscle soreness is minimized once anaerobic exercise becomes a regular part of your exercise routine. This is due to the fact that regular anaerobic exercise increases your body’s tolerance to exercise waste byproducts such as lactic acid.
4. Anaerobic Exercise can Prevent Some Health Conditions and Diseases
Regular anaerobic exercise reduces the risk of developing common diseases such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and even some malignancies.
According to one study conducted by exercise physiologists, the fundamental process of high-intensity exercise, known as glycolysis, can help to prevent tumor formation in the body. Anaerobic exercise was found to be far more helpful than moderately paced exercise in reducing cancer growth in both animals and people. It’s common knowledge that anaerobic exercise improves blood flow to the heart and increases bone strength in the body, which helps you avoid ailments such as diabetes and heart disease.
Anaerobic exercise also benefits your cardiovascular health (your heart health) significantly. Low-density lipoprotein (LDL) is burned during anaerobic exercise. The arteries around the heart could clog when there’s too much LDL. Burning it provides for continuous blood flow to the heart, ensuring that it remains as functional as possible.
Your health is your wealth; therefore anything you can do to keep your heart in good shape should be factored into your workout and self-care regimen. Hypertension, or excessive blood pressure, is also reduced as a result of this. So you should keep in mind those 30-40 minutes of anaerobic exercise every other day will keep the physicians at bay.
5. Lean Muscle Mass is Increased and Maintained
Another advantage of anaerobic training is its ability to create and maintain lean muscle mass. Anaerobic exercises wear down your muscles at a faster pace because they are sustained by energy drawn from the glucose stored in your muscles. Lactic acid builds up in your lean muscles as a result of this, which produces pain.
Building lean muscle is very important for your health. It not only reduces obesity-related issues, but it also improves your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), or the quantity of calories you burn at rest. Building lean muscle also protects your bones from becoming weak and brittle. Muscle mass and strength increase your body’s ability to protect your joints.
This can help you avoid getting hurt. High impact and low impact weight-bearing activities are both beneficial in the battle against osteoporosis. As a result, anaerobic training, such as weight lifting, can help you hold your body up and retain bone strength for a longer period of time.
In Conclusion
Strength training and anaerobic exercise is equally as crucial for your health as cardio and aerobic exercise. Remember that if you enjoy your fitness program, you’ll be more likely to stick to it. If you don’t enjoy an anaerobic activity, try a different one. Also, consider altering your workout program on a regular basis to keep your body challenged while avoiding boredom.
You can actually train your aerobic metabolism by doing anaerobic exercise. Working on each system improves the performance of the others. When you increase your strength, you also increase your endurance, which means you can go longer before your cardio wears you out.
Lifting weights, sprinting, exercising with resistance bands and interval training are all classic anaerobic activities that will get your muscles working. To increase weight loss and improve overall fitness, consider doing intervals of aerobic exercise with a few spurts of anaerobic exercise thrown in every now and again.
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