Cardiorespiratory endurance, cardiorespiratory fitness, or cardiorespiratory performance is a measure of your physical health during any moderate to high-intensity exercise. To be more specific, cardiorespiratory endurance indicates how well your lungs, heart, and muscle perform when you undergo intense physical routine.
In the last post, we have discussed ways to improve cardiovascular endurance. Here, we will keep our focus on empirical ways to measure it and why you need to boost cardiorespiratory performance in the first place.
A Recap of How to Boost Cardiorespiratory Performance
Before jumping to the benefits of improving cardiorespiratory endurance and ways to measure it, let’s have a recap of ways through which you can improve it.
- Running Planks: An indoor exercise where you develop core muscle strength while working out like a mountain climber.
- Burpees: Squat thrust reps with additional stands between reps that boost both lower and upper body strength.
- Jumping Jacks: A school exercise that still helps improve cardiovascular strength.
- Breathing Exercises: They improve the respiratory endurance that subsequently boosts cardiorespiratory performance. Using a respiratory training device makes breathing exercises more effective and fruitful.
The combination of these aerobic and breathing exercises and activities come in handy in boosting cardiorespiratory performance.
Measuring Cardiorespiratory Strength
Even though you can feel and tell the level of cardiorespiratory endurance by undergoing or observing high-intensity physical exercises, you need to calculate it in empirical terms to improve it further. Fitness experts and researchers usually use these two methods to measure cardiorespiratory strength.
Metabolic Equivalents (METs)
The metabolic equivalent is a relative value of your energy consumption during the resting and working phase. It is essentially the ratio of the working metabolic rate relative to the resting metabolic rate. Let’s suppose your resting or basal metabolic rate is 1, and your working metabolic rate while running is 3. So, your relative MET for running would be 3. This MET value suggests that you need to exert three times the energy for running than what you would need if you were resting.
Researchers have also assigned relative MET rates to different physical activities.
Moderate-level Physical Activities
- Weight training, multiple exercises, 8-15 repetitions at varied resistance: 3.5
- Calisthenics (e.g., pushups, sit-ups, pull-ups, lunges), the moderate effort: 3.8
- Pilates, general: 3.8
- Yoga: 3
- Water aerobics, water calisthenics, water exercise: 2.5
- Bicycling, the very light effort: 5.3
- Walking 3.0 mph (4.8 km/h): 3.3
- Calisthenics, home exercise, light or moderate effort, general: 3.5
- Walking 3.4 mph (5.5 km/h): 3.6
- Bicycling, <10 mph (16 km/h), leisure, to work or for pleasure: 4
- Bicycling, the light effort: 5.5
High-Intensity Physical Activities > 6
- Jogging: 7
- Calisthenics (e.g., pushups, sit-ups, pull-ups, jumping jacks), the heavy, vigorous effort: 8
- Running jogging, in place: 8
- Rope jumping: 10
If you can improve your relative MET and durations of corresponding physical activities, you boost your cardiorespiratory performance.
Maximum Oxygen Uptake Test (VO2 Max Test)
It is the second most common test used for measuring cardiorespiratory strength and performance. The test determines the optimal oxygen amount the body can use during intense physical activities. The test is usually conducted while the person is running or sprinting. Usually, trainers and experts take the VO2 max test by following this procedure.
- The person whose cardiorespiratory strength has to be measured is asked to run on a treadmill or peddle a stationary bike. They need to run or peddle as fast as possible.
- The person wears a chest or any other attachment during the activity that records their heart rate.
- They also need to wear a mask that can measure oxygen consumption.
Increased oxygen uptake and stable heart rate indicate better cardiorespiratory strength.
Benefits of Improving Cardiorespiratory Endurance
Improved cardiorespiratory endurance entails a host of benefits. We are going to outline some of them here.
- Improving cardiorespiratory strength can help you regulate your hypertension. Also, people with lower cardiorespiratory endurance are more likely to develop high blood pressure with age.
- By improving cardiorespiratory strength, you can keep your multitasking intact in the golden years of life, as indicated by this 2015 study.
- People who improve their cardiorespiratory strength can cut down the frequency of asthma attacks and assuage their severity.
- Boosting cardiovascular endurance through aerobic and anaerobic exercises regulates insulin levels in the body and enables diabetic patients to improve their quality of life.
- Improving cardiovascular strength is also linked to decreasing the risk of coronary heart diseases.
Besides all these vital benefits, boosting cardiorespiratory performance also improves the quality of sleep, helps you regulate weight, boosts your mood, improves immune response, and also maintains your cognitive capabilities in the twilight of your life.
Contact us if you want to boost your cardiorespiratory strength via breathing exercises. We will provide you one of the most effective and user-friendly respiratory training devices available on the block.