What Is FITNESS?

What Is Fitness?

In today’s world everyone is getting inclined towards health and fitness. People join gyms, yoga classes, dance classes with the motive or goal of staying fit. According to them, fitness is just doing some sort of physical activity & eating greens. But it’s not that simple, is it? I might use some terms which some may not be able understand yet. Don’t worry gradually, I’ll get y’all acquainted with them 🙂

Fitness of an individual is based on 5 basic components namely,

Cardiovascular Endurance: 

• The ability of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems to transport oxygenated blood to the working skeletal muscles for a prolonged period without fatiguing.
• People generally tend to take it for granted and concentrate solely on weight training, chasing the pump.
• A decrease in this component makes tasks like climbing several floors at a time, walking, jogging, running, swimming fairly long distances, etc very difficult.
• Very compromised cardiovascular endurance may even cause a cardiac arrest during above mentioned activities.
• This component can be improved by doing low intensity exercises over a long duration without stopping (which are aerobic in nature). The intensity should be low enough to allow a person to continuously do the activity for at least 20 mins.
• If one can do the same activity for 60 mins easily, intensity should be increased either by increasing speed, inclination( Eg: on treadmills) and resistance.
• Good cardiovascular fitness will also help one in big lifts such as squats, dead lifts, bench press, etc.

Muscular Endurance:

• The ability of the working skeletal muscles to continuously contract at a sub maximal level for a prolonged period without fatiguing.
• For example, running long distances requires muscular endurance of the leg muscles like quadriceps(thigh), hamstrings, calves, glutes, etc if the person has low muscular endurance he might fail to run for long duration not due to cardiovascular failure but due to low muscular endurance. (lactic acid build up i.e. the burn you feel when you run for too long or in any other activity as such)
• So how do you build up muscular endurance? Some fitness experts believe this can be improved by doing resistance strength training with lighter weights that allow high repetitions. However, it is challenged only when the activity is performed for at least 20 mins or one which includes 100 or 1000’s of repetitions. Hence that is not a smart choice.
• Hence, opt for Cross Training. This type of cardio training involves both upper body and lower body equally. An example of this would be to devote 3 days a week of different cardio activities like Elliptical Trainer, Treadmill, Cycling or Swimming. Other option would be different activities in the same day such as 15 mins of treadmill and cycling, 15 mins elliptical and so on.

                  

Musculoskeletal Strength:

• When you’ve been hitting the gym lately, seeing some chest gains. People be like “How much do you bench press, bro?”
• Well, if you want that answer to be big enough to impress your friends, you need to work on your strength.
• It is the ability of the working skeletal muscles to contact maximally for against a given load or resistance in a given time frame.
• This can be improved by training in the rep ranges like 2-8 Repetitions Max (RM). One can also opt for 1RM once in a while to test their strength. However, the rep range 8-12 is said to be ideal for hypertrophy i.e increasing muscle size in simple terms.
• Opt for Structural, Compound and Unsupported movements like Squats, Dead Lifts, Lunges, Bench Presses, Parallel Bar Dips etc to improve functional strength which is beneficial in day to day life too.

Flexibility:

• Often neglected by people in the gym. The enjoy the post workout pumps, feel good and end up stretching in a hurry, not giving it enough importance.
• A lack of flexibility will hamper your mobility, and will not allow you have to have a full range of motion (ROM). For example, when squatting, some people can’t go below parallel, this is because their hamstrings are tight, ultimately limiting potential muscle gains.
• Static/Passive stretching needs to be done after the end of every workout. I’ll discuss stretching and what types should one do in upcoming articles. One needs to hold these stretches for at least 10-15 seconds for lengthening muscle and gaining some benefits.

Here comes the last one. Pheww! That was one long read? Don’t worry this is just to build a foundation for you so you can benefit much more from my upcoming articles.

Ideal Body Composition:

• It is the ideal ratio of the body fat or adipose tissue to lean muscle mass in an individual.
• The ideal body fat for Men is considered to be 15% while for women it is considered to be around 20%.
• Body fat can be reduced by working on all the above components of fitness and obviously  when coupled with a good diet. As you might have heard “Abs are made in the kitchen.” As a matter of fact every muscle is made in the kitchen. 😉 I will discuss the best and optimal ways to reduce fat and probably bust some myths and stupid ideas some people come up with to burn fat in upcoming posts.

Too much information for the first post,aye? Don’t worry it’ll sink in.

Stay tuned for more articles. My next one will be on “WHY SHOULD WOMEN WEIGHT TRAIN?” Do wait for it, it’ll be beneficial for all you cardio bunnies out there. Haha. Hope you liked my post, please share it with your friends and family and give it a like. For enquiries, please do feel free to contact me.

Thank you.