Recumbant bikes and cardio
I may be wrong on the time, but I think it is recommended that you get 20 to 30 minutes of cardio exercise 3 to 4 times a week. I'm not 100% clear as to what constitutes cardio since every book you read has a different definition. I know it has something to do with exercising at a certain percentage of your target heart rate. Some describe biking as a moderate exercise with competitive biking being high impact. I have also read that if you do bikes, you are supposed to do twice as many minutes as jogging to get the same impact. That doesn't make much sense to me since I actually burn about 700 calories in an hour on my recumbant, and I generally workout 6 days a week. Okay, here are my questions.
My max heart rate is supposed to be 155. I generally exercise in the 125 to 140 range depending upon how hard I am working. Is this enough heart rate? Do I just need to do this 20 to 30 minutes to get the "cardio" workout or do I need to be doing 45 to 60 minutes. The reason I ask is that I don't always have the time to do an hour of cardio in the evenings. Doing it for 30 minutes in the morning would be a better use of my time on some days. I'm getting good results. I have lost 24 lbs since mid-June just cutting my calories and using the bike, but I wanted to make sure I'm actually exercising in the most efficient manner.
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