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Healthy hearts require concerted exercise plans

The only way to keep your body from getting sluggish and complacent is to use it. Finding ways to sneak in exercise in our increasingly automated world is a great way to stay active.

Anything from choosing the stairs over the escalator, parking farther away and walking, or doing static lunges while waiting at a counter are all useful tricks for keeping exercise on your mind.

While these are all great starts, they are not enough. There is no getting around setting time aside for push-your-body exercise that takes you out of your comfort zone.

This level varies daily, so you will have to learn what your body is telling you. An excellent way to monitor your workout is to pay attention to your breathing. If your goal is to develop a healthy cardiovascular system to keep your heart and arteries clear, you should perform your cardio at a level where you can just barely speak in complete sentences. If you are already at this level and want to increase your calorie-burning capacity, give this a try.

For the cardio portion, choose a treadmill, jump rope, step board or jumping jacks

For the active rest portion do dumbbell curls, push-ups, static forearm planks or crunches.

Here is a sample workout using the treadmill and the push-up.

After sufficient warm-up time (for you to determine), build your speed up on the treadmill until you achieve a sprint-type pace that you can keep only for about 30 seconds. This should take about five to eight minutes to build to the speed for all-out effort.

Safely come off the treadmill, and after a few breaths, perform 60 seconds of push-ups at a comfortable pace. Your heart rate should be slowing down by now.

For the next three to five minutes, get back on the treadmill and build back to all-out effort. Repeat until you have completed at least three all-out efforts.

The point of the routine is to achieve the safest and highest intensity possible and to take as much rest time as needed to do it again in the same exercise session.

Give it a try today, and let me know how it goes.

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