Skip to main content

Here Are Some of The Best Aerobic Exercises for Men

Though there always seems to be someone willing to debate whether men or women have an easier or harder lot in life, one area where men are inherently at a disadvantage is heart disease risk. That’s right; “being male” is one of the top risk factors for heart disease, the number one cause of death in the United States. Moreover, men over the age of 40 are at an even greater risk.

aerobic cardio gym equipment.
Anna Tis / Pexels

Before you start feeling defeated because your sex and age are uncontrollable, the good news is that another major risk factor for heart disease is a sedentary lifestyle, which is absolutely a modifiable risk factor you can do something about. Regularly performing aerobic exercise — with the goal of accumulating 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity per week — has been shown to significantly reduce the risk of heart disease. Plus, with so many great options for aerobic exercise, most guys can find some type of enjoyable (or at least workable!) cardio exercise. Need some inspiration and ideas for your cardio workouts? Keep reading for a roundup of the best aerobic exercises for men.

What Is Aerobic Exercise?

A man's wrist with a watch display aerobic heart rate.
Unsplash

Aerobic exercise is an exercise that conditions the cardiovascular system and increases your heart rate but is performed “with oxygen.” In other words, your heart rate and breathing rate do indeed increase, but you’re not totally breathless while you work out. Generally speaking, the aerobic exercise zone is 70-80% of your maximum heart rate.

For example, if your maximum heart rate is 180 bpm, aerobic exercise occurs at a heart rate range of 126-144 bpm. Though not entirely accurate, you can ballpark your maximum heart rate using the formula ‘220 minus age in years.’

Benefits of Aerobic Exercise

Aerobic exercise has many health benefits, including the following:

  • Reducing blood pressure
  • Strengthening the heart and lungs
  • Improving the elasticity, capacity, and density of blood vessels
  • Burning calories and supporting weight loss
  • Regulating blood sugar levels
  • Increasing HDL (“good”) cholesterol levels
  • Lowering LDL (“bad”) cholesterol levels
  • Improving sleep
  • Reducing symptoms of asthma
  • Improving mood
  • Reducing anxiety
  • Strengthening the immune system
  • Reducing the risk of lifestyle diseases like obesity, diabetes, and atherosclerosis

Best Aerobic Exercises for Men

There is no single “best” aerobic exercise for men; rather, any form of sustainable physical activity that increases your heart rate to an appropriate zone will serve you well. That said, it’s advisable to vary the types of aerobic exercise you do to prevent overuse injuries and fitness plateaus. It’s also a good idea to perform aerobic exercises that use different muscle groups. For example, pairing cycling with swimming is a better way to strengthen your legs, arms, and core than pairing cycling with stair climbing.

Walking

Walking is certainly the simplest aerobic exercise, but that doesn’t make it any less effective. Depending on your fitness level, walking at a leisurely pace may not be vigorous enough to get your heart rate elevated enough to be getting an aerobic workout, but walking at a brisk pace or up an incline are two great ways to ramp up the intensity. You can also consider wearing a weighted vest or carrying a heavy pack. If you’re not walking on a treadmill where you can check your heart rate, consider wearing a fitness watch or heart rate monitor for your fitness walks to ensure you’re pushing yourself hard enough to get a good aerobic workout.

Hiking

A man hiking with gorgeous lake view
Unsplash

Hiking is essentially just the wilderness form of walking, but it is often even more conducive to aerobic workouts because of the inherent challenges of the terrain. Again, wearing a pack can increase the intensity along with the number of calories you’ll burn on your hike.

Stair Climbing

Whether you hop on a stair climber exercise machine or head to a local stadium or skyscraper to hoof it up real stairs, stair climbing is a sure-fire way to boost your heart rate and get a challenging aerobic workout. You’ll also strengthen your glutes, quads, hamstrings, calves, and core. Consider wearing a heart rate monitor to ensure you’re staying within the aerobic zone because stair climbing can easily push you up into near-maximal heart rates.

Elliptical

Man doing elliptical.
Pexels

Elliptical machines are among the most popular pieces of cardio exercise equipment because they offer many of the fitness benefits of running while minimizing the impact on your joints. You can adjust the resistance and incline to vary your workouts and challenge your body as your fitness improves. Be sure to use the elliptical machines with movable arms to ensure you’re getting your heart rate up into the aerobic zone and getting a total-body workout.

Rowing

Up close rowing machine.
Unsplash

Though most of us don’t have easy access to a boathouse on a lake or river, you can get an excellent aerobic workout on a rowing machine. Rowing is said to use 86% of the muscles in your body, so it’s as good a total-body strengthening workout as it is an aerobic or cardio one.

Running

Jogging and running are among the best aerobic workouts for men because they get your entire body working and have been repeatedly demonstrated to improve the health of your heart and lungs, reduce the risk of many lifestyle diseases, improve mood, and support weight loss. Running is fairly accessible, with a low barrier of entry so long as you have access to a pair of running shoes and a safe road, track, trail, or treadmill.

Cycling

Cycling can take on many forms, from mountain biking and outdoor cycling to spinning and stationary bike workouts indoors. No matter how you pedal, cycling is a fantastic low-impact aerobic exercise for men. It strengthens your heart, lungs, and entire lower body, and you can easily vary your routine, resistance, and cadence to keep your fitness progressing.

Cross-Country Skiing and Snowshoeing

A mansnowashoeing with a dog.
Unsplash

If you live in a climate with cold, snowy winters, make Mother Nature’s playground your workout space with aerobic snow sports like cross-country skiing and snowshoeing. Cross-country skiing is a low-impact, total-body workout since you also rely heavily on your upper body to propel you forward with ski poles. Snowshoeing can also be performed with or without poles but is a great way to get your heart pumping and lungs panting.

Calisthenics

Exercises like jumping jacks, mountain climbers, burpees, bodyweight squats, and push-ups are excellent ways to increase your heart rate and get your blood pumping. Completing calisthenics in a circuit fashion — one to the next with minimal rest — is the best way to keep your heart rate elevated throughout the duration of the workout.

It’s important to note that for a true “aerobic workout,” you don’t want to be working at as vigorous of intensity as you would during high-intensity interval training (HIIT). Aerobic exercise is generally considered to be capped around 75% of your maximum heart rate. Beyond that, you are working more in anaerobic zones, as demonstrated by feeling more breathless, or “without oxygen.” For aerobic exercise, keep the intensity more moderate and consistent.

Jumping Rope

Jumping rope is a fantastic cardio workout. It can be extremely vigorous and may skyrocket your heart rate out of the aerobic zone if you push the pace. However, if you jump rope at a moderate rate, you’ll reap all the bone-building and strengthening benefits of jumping rope along with the cardiovascular benefits of aerobic exercise.

Amber Sayer
Former Digital Trends Contributor

Amber Sayer is a fitness, nutrition, and wellness writer and editor, and was previously a Fitness Editor at Byrdie. She contributes to Women's Running and freelances for various fitness blogs. As a certified personal trainer for 12 years, Amber enjoys staying active and helping others do so as well. In her free time, she likes running, cycling, cooking, and tackling any type of puzzle.

Send all editorial inquiries HERE.

The 4 Best Stationary Bikes for Kids to Use
A father and his son using exercise bikes in a gym on a sunny day

Parents with young children at home are likely familiar with a chorus of pleas to do exactly the same things as mom or dad, and if you’ve outfitted your home gym with an indoor cycle or exercise bike, your kiddo may be looking to join in on the fun. Unfortunately, unless you have taller tweens or teenagers, most stationary bikes and spin bikes for adults are too big for kids and too difficult to pedal. Even the most adjustable standard exercise bikes rarely can fit any rider shy of five feet tall. However, with the rise in popularity of exercise equipment for homes, some toy companies and physical education brands have come out with stationary bikes for kids.
Exercise bikes for kids not only allow young riders to reap the health benefits of physical activity, but they can also be a great way to bond with your child while you get your workout in and keep your eye on them to ensure their safety. If your little one has the energy to burn and would love to be your pedal partner, get them a safe, functional stationary bike with one of our recommendations for the best stationary bikes for kids below.

Related Guides

Read more
Grab the Best Elite Fitness Gear for Working Out
Man doing a dip at the gym.

You might be among those of a "resolutionary" mindset in regards to fitness. Perhaps you’ve decided that this is the year when you really kick your workout routine into overdrive in order to push your results to the next level. To get there, however, you’re going to need the right gear. We’ve got you covered with our roundup of the best elite fitness gear.

These recommendations span both the functional gear that will actively help you get the most out of your fitness routine, plus a few suggestions for fitness clothing and apparel that will help you look and feel the best while you’re at it. All of this gear has been firsthand tested to verify that it is authentically awesome.
Puma FUSE Training Shoes

Read more
12 Best Medicine Ball Exercises for a Total-Body Workout
Couple doing medicine ball workout together.

If you’re looking to ditch the gym and outfit your home with versatile exercise equipment for the best total-body workouts, you can’t go wrong with a couple of medicine balls. Medicine balls can be used for all sorts of strengthening, cardiovascular, and mobility exercises, ranging from everything from explosive plyometric exercises to slow and controlled core work. Medicine ball workouts can be as challenging as any hard dumbbell workout and can add variety to stimulate your muscles to promote gains in strength while also preventing boredom.

Medicine balls provide resistance like dumbbells or kettlebells, so they can almost always be used in place of one of these more common weighted implements as long as you can modify the grip to accommodate holding the medicine ball in both hands. Moreover, unlike other weights, resistance bands, or barbells, medicine balls can be thrown and dropped, opening up a whole array of dynamic, powerful, metabolic conditioning exercises. You can put together many fun, engaging, effective medicine ball workouts with this multi-functional training tool. Below, we share some of the medicine ball exercises to get you started.

Read more