Four Ways to Improve Cardio Endurance

Cardiovascular endurance is how efficiently your lungs, heart, and blood vessels provide oxygen-rich blood to your muscles during activity.

When your cardiovascular endurance is most efficient, your lungs, heart, and blood vessels will work better during rest as well – leading to a healthier life all around!  

Building cardio endurance can be done with both specific strength training workouts, and with particular types of cardio exercises.  

Here are my TOP 4 ways to improve cardio endurance

1) Combine Strength Training with Cardio

My favorite way to combine strength training and cardio is with metabolic strength workouts. These training sessions are super-efficient strength training with added cardio benefits. Perform these workouts with as little as 4-5 full-body exercises, back-to-back, in a specified amount of time.  

You can download some of my favorite metabolic workouts on my website here: https://barbsfitforlife.com/free-downloads/

2) Do Interval Workouts

Interval workouts combine two different activities into one workout. You can alternate short bursts of intense exercise with longer intervals. 


For example, you can walk for longer intervals (3-4 minutes), and then have a short burst of jogging for 30 seconds. Then return to walking again. You can do this with running (sprint for the 30 seconds) or even biking or swimming. You would swim or bike faster (or uphill, etc.) for the intense 30 second period. 

3) Add More Compound Movements

Compound exercises are multi-joint movements that work several muscles or muscle groups at one time.

For example, you can combine a squat with a bicep curl, instead of doing a bicep curl alone. Push-ups are also a great example of a compound exercise because that one exercise works many muscle groups at once.

You’ll notice when you add more compound exercises to your workouts – your heart rate will go up! 

4) Exercise Regularly

Consistency is how we get results. I use the motto #3to5forexercise.

Exercise 3-5 days per week with the workouts mentioned above, even often only 10-20 minutes at a time. Make training fit with your lifestyle. It’s hard to improve cardio endurance if you only workout a few times a month – even if you are doing 1-2 hour workouts during that time.  

Consistent workouts make all the difference when it comes to improving our cardiovascular endurance!