By Team Beachbody

Exercise or any activity that increases your heart rate for 10 minutes or more and leaves you breathing heavily is called aerobic exercise. Aerobic means "with oxygen" and to get its benefits you must increase your heart rate by at least 20 beats per minute over your resting rate. (Take your pulse when your body is at rest to get this number.)

Many enjoyable sports—including tennis, baseball, golf, volleyball and weight-lifting—are beneficial but not usually truly aerobic, since they don't keep you moving vigorously enough for a prolonged period. On the other hand, fast walking, cycling, running, jogging, rollerblading, ice skating, rowing, aerobic dancing and kick-boxing programs provide incredible aerobic benefits when performed vigorously.

Aerobic exercise is key to losing weight, because your calorie burn rate is higher for each minute of exercise than with non-aerobic (or "anaerobic") exercises.

One of the most popular and beneficial aerobic exercise programs today is kick-boxing, which combines calorie burning, strength training, and self-defense benefits of repeated martial-arts moves (such as Tai Chi, Judo, etc.) It's as if you're getting 3 workouts at one time. Be careful starting this type of workout, as it can be challenging to muscles and joints while you learn the moves.

Tae Bo is a popular and challenging routine that has been promoted heavily on television, offered to viewers for $60. Feedback on this program is that it is excellent, although somewhat difficult if you are unfamiliar with the moves. Beachbody created the Tai-Fit Total Body Workout with a Basics program to help our members get the benefits of a Tae Bo type of workout for under $20.

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