It makes sense that legs get stronger and build muscle, making cardio easier. But how does cardio make it easier to breathe and run longer distances before becoming fatigued and winded?
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heart and lungs are muscles too. Cardio exercises those muscles. Your body also adapts to the higher demand by finding ways to operate more efficiently. Unfortunately your body will only be as efficient as it has to. So stop working out and it will go back to the lazy way.
The heart is a muscle and becomes better at pumping blood. The body increases red blood cells and hemoglobin to better carry oxygen, and the muscles become more efficient and use less resources to do the same work.
Your heart is a muscle too. With exercise it gets stronger (pumps more blood per beat).
There are other body changes with cardio too, but largely it works like any other exercise.
There are a bunch of different adaptations that happen.
* The heart and lungs get better at transporting oxygen to the muscles
* The mitochondria in the muscles improve their ability to convert glucose and fat to energy.
* The muscles increase the number of mitochondria in the muscle fibers.
* The muscles get stronger
Those adaptations help the aerobic system.
In addition, there are improvements in the anaerobic system; the body gets better at dealing with the lactate that is generated by the anaerobic system.
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