5 best exercises to keep your heart healthy

An apple a day keeps the doctor away!’, as true as the saying goes, is it enough? The pandemic has left us all with plenty of time making us realise the importance to focus on our health and well-being.

With more and more people inculcating exercise into their daily routine and identifying what suits best for them, the overall well-being has taken a forefront and enabled people to work towards improving their heart health.

After all, a healthy heart is all you need to live life to the fullest! While a well-balanced diet and regular activities do help to amplify heart health, it is also essential to include some good exercises that will keep you active.

Listed below are some of the exercises that will help you keep your heart healthy:

1. Burpees

Burpees are a great calorie-torching, strength-building and full body exercise. They help a person to burn out the extra fat and work towards helping the body increase its metabolism. The regular burpee involves a four-point movement: Standing straight, dropping into a squat with hands touching the ground in front of your feet, pushing the feet back behind you and being in a raised plank position, and lifting yourself back up.

2. Plank

Planks is one of the easiest and hassle free exercises to perform. It is a great full body static workout that allows you to use multiple muscle groups which makes the heart pump in order to supply enough blood. It is also less time-consuming and hence a 30 second to one-minute plank works well for beginners. For those who find the full body plank to be tough, can start off with the elbow plank position and be sure to keep the body in line and parallel to the floor.

3. Mountain climbers

This exercise works on the core, arms and legs and is highly effective towards improving the metabolic rate. Starting off in a high plank position, then pulling the knee towards your chest and alternating this motion with your legs. The neck is kept neutral and the back and shoulders are in line. Beginners can start by doing this for one minute and increase as they get used to the motion.

4. Bicycle crunches

This exercise works on the core and utilises the back muscles and legs too to keep the momentum. It works towards improving the metabolic rate and hence makes the heart stronger which further helps in purifying the blood. Start off by lying on your back and bringing your legs up into a 90-degree angle. Lift your shoulders off the ground with hands behind your head, bring your left knee up towards the right elbow and then repeat the same with the right leg touching the left knee.

5. Squats

Not only are squats extremely effective in burning calories, but they also make the heart stronger and improve metabolism. With or without weights, squats are an easy way to stay active and make the heart function more effectively. This type of exercise also works towards building and strengthening muscles and hence puts less pressure on the heart to pump blood around the body.