Aerobic means with air or oxygen. You should be able to carry on a short conversation while doing aerobic exercise. If you are gasping for air while talking, you are probably working anaerobically. Aerobic exercise improves long-term endurance while anaerobic exercise improves short-term endurance. Dance tends to use mostly anaerobic activity during technique classes and exercise. Performing repetitive movements will improve muscular endurance. In some circumstances, choreographers include vigorous demands on dancer’s aerobic endurance which leads to progressive overload.
Think of aerobic activity as being long in duration but low in intensity. Aerobic activities include: walking, biking, jogging, swimming, aerobic classes and cross-country skiing. Anaerobic activity is short in duration and high in intensity. Anaerobic activities include: racquetball, downhill skiing, weight lifting, sprinting, softball, soccer and football.
Aerobic exercise conditions the heart and lungs by increasing the oxygen available to the body and by enabling the heart to use oxygen more efficiently. Exercise alone cannot prevent or cure heart disease. It is only one factor in a total program of risk reduction; examples of other factors are high blood pressure, cigarette smoking and high cholesterol level.
Among the recognized benefits of doing regular aerobic exercise are: • Strengthening the muscles involved in respiration • Strengthening and enlarging the heart muscle, to improve its pumping efficiency and reduce the resting heart rate, known as aerobic conditioning • Improving circulation efficiency and reducing blood pressure • Improved mental health, including reducing stress and lowering the incidence of depression • Reducing the risk for diabetes. • Burns body fat, while building leaner muscle.
As a result, aerobic exercise can reduce the risk of death due to cardiovascular problems. In addition, high-impact aerobic activities (such as