Exercises That Strengthen Your Heart

Your heart is a powerful organ. It beats about 100,000 times per day, pumping almost a gallon and a half of blood each minute through nearly 60,000 miles of blood vessels. In doing so, it supplies blood to nearly every cell in your body.

With so much to do, your heart needs some extra support. Fortunately, David Bolon, MD, is a cardiac expert specializing in heart attack prevention and has suggestions to help you support your heart. Visit us at Manhattan Integrative Cardiovascular in Midtown East Manhattan, New York City, for a personalized plan to boost your heart health. 

A portion of that plan usually focuses on specific types of exercise. Getting weekly activity in these three categories goes a long way toward strengthening your heart. 

#1: Aerobic exercise

This type of activity temporarily increases your heart rate, which in turn increases your circulation. This win-win process supports your overall health. Plus, once you stop your exercise of choice and have cooled down, it can help your heart beat more slowly, reducing strain on this organ. 

Aim to get at least a half-hour of aerobic exercise five days a week, which can include:

• Brisk walking
• Running
• Playing any sport (e.g., pickleball, soccer, basketball)
• Yoga
• Cycling
• Swimming

Find something you enjoy enough that you’ll want to do it near-daily. 

#2: Strength training

This type of exercise doesn’t just strengthen your muscles — it can also help your heart. Research has shown that resistance training can help to reduce your risk of heart disease by 17%. 

Even 30 minutes a week is enough to see improvement here. You could join a gym or buy some free weights for your house, but you don’t necessarily need any equipment to strength train. Plenty of YouTube videos can walk you through using your body weight to resistance train at home. 

#3: Work on flexibility and balance

While these don’t directly strengthen your heart, they’re critical in keeping you moving through the years. And your ability to get aerobic and strengthening exercise impacts your cardiovascular health. 

Options like yoga and tai chi can help here, but stretching at home, especially before and after aerobic exercise, can also be beneficial. 

Taking your heart protection a step further

Regular exercise helps your heart function at its best. But if you want to do even more to ensure your heart is healthy, we can help.

Here at Manhattan Integrative Cardiovascular, Dr. Bolon offers cardiac screenings. He has a wide range of tools he can use to evaluate your heart and its performance. This way, he can best tailor a heart health plan to you. 

If you’d like to schedule a cardiac screening to complement your exercise routine, call our team at (716) 303-4738 or book your appointment online today.