Steady-state cardio is a form of cardio exercise where you will do an aerobic exercise like running, rowing, or cycling for extended periods of time. Through steady-state cardio, you will gain quite a few benefits. While the benefits of steady-state cardio are pretty good, here are some other reasons to do steady-state cardio.
- Steady-state cardio helps you recover faster
- Steady-state cardio burns a lot of calories
- Steady-state cardio is fantastic at increasing your endurance
- Steady-state cardio will boost your motivation
- Steady-state cardio is a beginner-friendly exercise
- Steady-state cardio is a great filler exercise in between weight lifting days
- Steady-state cardio can be a very social exercise
As you continue to read this article, we will be discussing the benefits of steady-state cardio. Afterward, we will give you 7 reasons to add steady-state cardio to your exercise routine.
Benefits Of Steady State Cardio
Steady-state cardio is an excellent form of exercise that comes with a myriad of benefits. These benefits include many forms of mental and physical health. Some of the benefits that you will gain when doing steady-state cardio are:
- It Is A Fantastic Way To Boost Your Overall Mental Health
Mental health is a very important factor in everyone’s life. As depression and stress build-up, they will have adverse effects on your motivation and mood. However, when doing an exercise like steady-state cardio, your brain releases endorphins that are used to counteract the adverse effects of stress and depression.
The endorphins released in your brain from steady-state cardio have many other beneficial effects like:
- Making you feel better by boosting your mood in a positive direction
- Increases motivation which will help you do tasks that you might otherwise not want to
- Help you fight off depression
- Reduces the amount of stress build-up
- Reduces The Risks Of Developing Chronic Diseases
Steady-state cardio is a broad exercise that can be done in different ways. However, it is always done with aerobic exercises that increase the health of your cardiovascular system. Which in turn helps strengthen your heart, blood flow, and oxygen intake. All of these effects of aerobic exercises help stave off chronic diseases like heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Not only that but strengthening your blood flow will reduce the risk of having a stroke.
Another fantastic effect of aerobic exercises strengthening your blood flow is the boost to your immune system. Because your blood flow strengthens with steady-state cardio, your blood is able to transfer oxygen throughout your body more efficiently, strengthening your immune system. By making your immune system stronger, you are reducing the risk of getting sick, which is always a plus.
- Steady-State Cardio Can Be A Good Way To Lose Weight
When most people go to the gym, their main goal is to either lose weight or stay in shape. Any form of cardio is a great way to lose excess fat, and steady-state cardio is no exception. However, there is something you should know. Due to how steady-state cardio is done, your body can become used to it fairly quickly. When this happens, your progress will plateau, meaning you have reached the current maximum progress.
Plateaus in fitness can be hard to overcome, but it can have adverse side effects for steady-state cardio depending on your goals. The main downside to doing steady-state cardio so often is that eventually, your body will start to lose muscle mass to streamline the blood flow process while at the same time getting to shred your excess fat.
However, you can combat this by spreading out your steady-state cardio sessions. Do this by doing a steady-state cardio session once or twice a week while in between weight lifting days. Doing this will guarantee that you gain all of the benefits from steady-state cardio without losing muscle mass.
7 Reasons To Do Steady-State Cardio
After going over the benefits above, let’s get into some other reasons you should do steady-state cardio. The benefits alone are a great reason to do steady-state cardio. However, there are even more reasons that you should start doing steady-state cardio.
- Steady-State Cardio Is Fantastic For Beginners
Steady-state cardio is a fantastic stepping stone for people who want to get into fitness. Steady-state cardio can be taken in steps to get into the exercise. For instance, you can hop on an exercise bike in a gym and cycle at a steady pace for 10 to 15 minutes. Next time you can push your time further, maybe 15 to 20 minutes.
The whole point of steady-state cardio is to raise your heart rate to a certain level and keep it there for extended periods of time. Keeping your heart rate elevated for long periods through exercise gives you a fantastic amount of benefits.
One of the only downsides to steady-state cardio is the amount of time that it takes up. Most people will suggest that you start steady-state cardio by keeping your heart rate elevated and steady for 10 to 15 minutes. But eventually, you should keep at it until you are able to keep your heart rate elevated and steady for up to an hour, sometimes more. However, this is only recommended for those who are interested in training for marathons.
With that said, you can use steady-state cardio to build up your endurance which will help you go further in other exercises. For instance, HIIT, or high-intensity interval training, gives you the same benefits as steady-state cardio but is about boosting your heart rate very high for short amounts of time. This explosive type of training is very hard, but if you use steady-state cardio and a jumping stone, you will find it easier than those who don’t
- Steady-State Cardio Helps You Recover Faster
There are 2 important steps when it comes to exercise: the exercise itself and recovery time. If you are not allowing yourself rest days in between intense workout sessions, you are leaving yourself vulnerable to injuries. However, with steady-state cardio, you are strengthening your heart and your blood flow. Strengthening your heart and blood flow will drastically reduce the amount of time that is needed to recover from intense workout sessions.
Weight lifting, in particular, requires a good amount of recovery time to allow your muscles to heal, strengthen, and grow. However, with the increase in blood flow, those muscles will see more oxygen and blood flowing through them, thus drastically decreasing recovery time.
- Steady-State Cardio Burns Tons Of Calories
Any form of aerobic exercise is a fantastic way of burning calories. For instance, rowing is probably the one exercise that burns the most amount of calories in an hour. Depending on the fitness level of the person rowing and the intensity of their rowing, you can burn up to 800 calories or more an hour. Just imagine doing steady-state cardio on a rowing machine. The number of calories you can burn will increase dramatically.
- Steady-state Cardio Is A Fantastic Way To Increase Your Endurance
Steady-state cardio is one of the best ways to increase your endurance drastically. By working and training with steady-state cardio week in and week out, you will see yourself lasting longer in all forms of aerobic exercises. From running and rowing to swimming and cycling, you will see boosts in energy, allowing yourself to go further
Endurance is very important for people who are training for marathons and triathlons. So they will be doing steady-state cardio every other day while also supplementing in weight lifting and HIIT.
- Steady-State Cardio Will Give a Boost To Your Motivation
Motivation is essential for everyone who wants to stay in shape. Not only that, but motivation is integral in our lives outside of the gym as well. Steady-state cardio will give you the boost of energy to increase your endurance. At the same time, steady-state cardio will release the ever so important endorphins that will boost your motivation.
The increased endurance and motivation will persuade you to keep going to the gym to stay in shape and get up in the morning to get to work on time and perform well. Who knows, maybe the extra energy and motivation you gain from steady-state cardio will give you that promotion or raise you’ve been after.
- Steady-State Cardio Is A Great filler Exercise In Between Weight Lifting Days.
When you go to the gym and do some serious weight lifting, you will definitely notice that your muscles will be sore and ache the next day. However, if your last workout session was not focused on legs, you can hop on an exercise bike or a treadmill and do 20 or so minutes of cardio. Doing a short session of steady-state cardio will get your blood pumping and your heart rate up, increasing the blood and oxygen flow to the muscles you damaged the previous day.
The increase in blood and oxygen provided by the short session of steady-state cardio will make your muscles heal faster. While it might be tempting to wait it out at home after working out, doing some cardio will definitely shorten the recovery time.
- Steady-state Cardio Can Be A Very Social Activity
If you are a beginner at steady-state cardio, this might not be true for you. But eventually, as you keep at it, you will find it easier to hold a conversation. Through consistent steady-state cardio training, you can bring a friend or two and talk about whatever you want with ease while exercising. This makes steady-state have the potential to be quite social.
Final Thoughts
Steady-state cardio is a great way to exercise. Steady-state has a ton of health benefits that come with this form of exercising. Hopefully, with the reasons we have provided above, you will give steady-state cardio a shot next time you go to the gym.