Welcome back to another Tradie article with Janey- Exercise Physiologist.

This time we are getting into more detail about cardiovascular health and how you can stay fit without putting too much strain on an  already tired body.

Firstly, let’s do a brief anatomy lesson on the cardiovascular system. We often think of cardiovascular heath as just our fitness but it’s much more than that. The cardiovascular system is made up of the veins and arteries, the heart and your blood. The cardiovascular system  transports oxygen and nutrients to our body, takes waste to the kidneys and liver to excrete, transports our hormones to where they need  to go, and maintains our body temperature. The health of this system is directly associated with heart attacks, type 2 diabetes, stroke,  mental wellbeing and energy levels.

The easiest way to increase your cardiovascular health is through exercise. Leading a busy life can make the generic recommendation of  30 minutes every day of cardio hard to fit in, especially if you feel like you are already on your feet all day.

The benefits of high intensity cardiovascular exercise are huge, but here is the catch- anything is better than nothing. Recent research has  shown that exercising vigorously for a total of 2 minutes a day was associated with an 18% lower risk of dying during the study period.

Doing at least 3 minutes per day was linked to a 40% lower risk of developing heart disease in that time, and was associated with a 16%  drop in cancer risk. The risk for all three categories dropped even more as the weekly amount increased.

That means that if we exercise vigorously for 2-3 minutes a day we are  significantly improving the health of our cardiovascular system and  increasing our fitness. One of the key aspects of this is the high intensity nature of the exercise. To exercise ‘vigorously’ means to  raise our heart rate up high (depending on your age and medication you are on it can be anywhere from 130bpm-170bpm), but you can  also do it on how it feels. It should feel hard and you shouldn’t be able to maintain that level of difficulty for longer than 3-4 minutes.

Ideas on how to get puffed for 2 minutes a day include; skipping, dancing, jumping, cycling fast, running fast or running on the spot, but  they can be anything that gets your heart rate up. Pair your 2 minutes cardio a day with your 3 x 20 minute workouts from the Feb/March  edition of Tradie New Zealand for strength balance, range of motion and now cardio all using less than 2 hours a week.