Heart and lung fitness

So that you can move smoothly and your body remains healthy, your two vital organs, namely the heart and lungs, must work properly. Well, it turns out that there is an easy way to find out if your heart and lungs are fit and healthy enough so that their function is maintained. You don't need to go to the hospital, you can do it yourself, really.

What is heart and lung fitness?

A person's body fitness can be measured from various things. For example, from the level of muscle fitness, heart fitness, and lung fitness. The fitness of these body parts can be increased and trained by physical activity and exercise.

By exercising fitness, the strength and endurance of your heart and lungs when you are on the move will increase. You can also move smoothly and not get tired easily.

How to measure heart and lung fitness?

If you want to measure the function of the heart and lungs in performing its performance, you can do a series of tests in the hospital, such as the Pulmonary Function Test (PFT) for the lungs and echocardiography (EKG) for the heart. However, the procedure is of course very complicated and costly.

So, you can find out the fitness level of your heart and lungs in an easier way, simply by doing aerobic exercise. You also don't need to bother going to the hospital to take a series of tests.

Aerobic exercise is a sport whose movements are regular for a certain duration and are done repeatedly. Examples are swimming, cycling, jogging, and aerobics.

Due to its repetitive and continuous movements, it requires stable energy and a good oxygen intake. So, aerobic exercise is good for the fitness of your heart and lungs.

Through your heart rate after aerobic exercise, you can measure whether your heart and lungs are fit and healthy enough.

An easy way to measure heart and lung fitness with aerobic exercise

First, prepare the tools needed, namely stopwatch and sports equipment. Then, count your resting heart rate and while on the move.

There are two steps you need to take to measure your heart rate. Check out the steps below.

Measure the arteries in the neck and the arteries in the wrist. While looking stopwatch , count how many heartbeats are in the duration of 10 seconds. Then, multiply by 6 to get the one minute heart rate. For example, in ten seconds you have 17 heartbeats, multiply 6. That means that in a minute you have 102 heartbeats.
Exercise for at least 10 minutes. After that, count your many heart rates again in a minute. You can use the same formula that is used when you measure your resting heart rate.

Now, pay attention to the size of a normal heart rate within one minute in the following healthy adults.

25 years old: 98-146

35 years old: 98-138

45 years old: 88-131

55 years old: 83 – 123

65 years old : 78 – 116

If you rarely exercise, you can immediately see a change in your heart rate just by walking for just 10 minutes. However, for those of you who are already exercising regularly, you may have to exercise for a while before your heart rate changes to a faster one.

Why so? This indicates that your heart and lungs have successfully adapted to physical activity, so that they can be more efficient in carrying out metabolism.

The more stable your heart rate is during exercise, the better your heart and lung fitness will be. A stable heart rate is also characterized by good breathing when doing activities or playing sports.

Meanwhile, if your heart rate tends to be irregular and fast, you may easily gasp and run out of breath when actively moving.