Even when you don't really realize it, a tiny fist-sized muscle in your rib cage called the heart does a lot of work for you. All the cells that make up your organs and tissues need nourishment to survive much like you need food and water. And without it, as is obvious, they would die. Your heart prevents this from happening by supplying oxygen and nutrient rich blood to all the organs and skin via the circulatory system. Unfortunately, a lot of things that we regularly do as part of our routine affect the working of our heart and sometimes prevent it from functioning well. This include activities like snoring, staying depressed, watching a lot of TV, drinking too much alcohol, and sometimes, not doing anything at all for too long.

The good news here is that there are ways to restore the health of your heart if you have been indulging in these activities or other habits that negatively affect your heart. One of the best ways to do this is exercise. And what's the best exercise, you ask? (drum roll) It's interval training.

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Why interval training? And what is it?

Before you give up on the idea of exercising thinking that 'interval training' is a fancy workout routine, know that almost everyone can perform interval training without the need of any equipment or coach. This is because interval training refers to a wide variety of exercises that differ in their pace and acceleration and anyone can change the routine according to his needs.

To keep your heart in good health, interval training is a must because it makes your heart pump blood faster, raising the heart rate but also putting more pressure on the walls of the arteries to expand. This improves the elasticity of the walls and thus your cardiovascular fitness.

Interval training can include biking, running, walking, hiking and some upper or lower body exercises. The idea is to work different set of muscles at different times and change the pace so that you can quickly use up the glycogen and carbohydrate content of your muscles, burning the fat after, but not getting too tired so that you can't continue for longer.

The ideal circuit for your heart health is walking for 3 minutes at a normal pace and then at a brisk pace or a jog for the next one. The short burst of high intensity like switching from striding to sprinting will allow your body to quickly use up fat and sugar from your blood.