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Aerobic exercises can help lower blood pressure and reduce the risk of a heart attack or stroke. Celebrity personal trainer Matt Roberts shares his favourites. You can probably feel you’re working your heart when you walk up a hill.

Your heart beats faster and you might feel out of breath, but you might not appreciate the full extent of the benefits. Any exercise that works your heart and lungs will strengthen the heart muscle, helping to prevent high blood pressure and the “bad” kind of cholesterol that can clog up our arteries. All of this is great for your health span and will reduce your risk of a heart attack or stroke.



While any kind of cardio, whether it’s walking or running, is good for heart health , for maximum heart benefits you need to mix up your training sessions. First, you’ll need some longer, low to medium-intensity training sessions (known as “zone two” training ), ideally three a week. Second, you need a couple of medium to high-intensity interval training (also known as HIIT ) sessions each week.

Finally, sports training, or anything that mimics it, is also great for developing cardiovascular fitness and heart strength. So how do you go about working these into your training? Walking While walking in general is good for you, to truly boost your heart health your pace needs to be quick, or the terrain will need to be highly varied so you are working hard enough. You’ll need to reach around 65-70 per cent of your maximum heart rate, and for m.

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