Improving your stamina

Any activity that gets your heart rate up and makes you breathe faster and heavier will burn calories and improve your aerobic fitness. Gardening, cleaning and using the stairs are all everyday activities that are also great exercise.

If you want to take your exercise up a notch, it may sound too simple to be effective, but walking/gentle pushing is a great exercise for building your stamina, burning calories and improving your general fitness. You can increase the intensity by changing the distance you cover, your speed and finding routes that involve small hills with a steady incline.

If you feel ready for more intense activity, running and cycling are great ways of starting to develop your lung capacity and stamina. If you’re not, don’t worry, here are some simple exercises that you can do at home that will still get your heart beating faster and make you breathe more heavily:

• Step ups – using either a step box, or just the bottom step of your stairs, repeatedly step up and down. Increase your speed and the time you do it for to increase the intensity.
• Marching – as simple as it sounds, standing in one spot, using your arms as well, concentrate on lifting your knees up to the same height as your waist. You can develop this into jogging on the spot for more intensity.
• Arms – a great way of warming up your muscles and raising your heart rate is lots of repetitions of movements such as punching in front of you or above your head (one arm at a time), raising your arms straight up to the sides or pointing your arms straight out to the sides and then making circular motions with your hands, changing directions every so often.

When you are ready for a new challenge and want to improve your fitness further, an exercise bike is a relatively cheap piece of equipment that doesn’t take up too much room. There is also a whole range of home cardio equipment available, including treadmills, rowing machines, cross trainers, handbikes and recumbent cycles that you could use to enhance your home exercise routine. The build quality and features of this equipment can vary a great deal, so shop around, do some research and find a machine that matches your needs.