Physical Fitness - Its Important Components

Physical fitness is the body's ability to function efficiently at work, as well as in leisure activities. Being fit helps the body to resist disease and meet emergency situations.

Physical fitness is not only sport specific, it may also be position specific. Physical fitness is extremely important for the older population because as a person ages, there is a higher level of fatigue and often pain resulting from arthritis, low back problems, or other ailments. As these conditions worsen over time, many older people become more sedentary thinking that if they rest they will get better.

Studies reveal that most Americans engage in physical fitness only once in a while. Others don't even exercise at all. And yet, about a quarter are able to find time to go the gym and sweat it out to their heart's delight. How could they?

It's easy to start a lifestyle of fitness. What's difficult is how to be consistent with it. Most people would spend money to enroll in gym memberships or buy those fitness equipment only to quit as soon as they start. Either they are too busy that they couldn no longer find time to keep it going or they quickly lose their interest due to lack of motivation.

The components of physical fitness are:

1. Cardiorespiratory (CR) endurance - the efficiency with which the body delivers oxygen and nutrients needed for muscular activity and transports waste products from the cells.

2. Muscular strength - the greatest amount of force a muscle or muscle group can exert in a single effort.

3. Muscular endurance - the ability of a muscle or muscle group to perform repeated movements with a sub-maximal force for extended periods of times.

4. Flexibility - the ability to move the joints or any group of joints through an entire, normal range of motion.

5. Body composition - the percentage of body fat a person has in comparison to his or her total body mass.

Improving the first three components of fitness listed above will have a positive impact on body composition and will result in less fat. Excessive body fat detracts from the other fitness components, reduces performance, detracts from appearance, and negatively affects your health.

Factors such as speed, agility, muscle power, eye-hand coordination, and eye-foot coordination are classified as components of "motor" fitness. These factors most affect your athletic ability. Appropriate training can improve these factors within the limits of your potential. A sensible weight loss and fitness program seeks to improve or maintain all the components of physical and motor fitness through sound, progressive, mission specific physical training.

Principles of Exercise

Adherence to certain basic exercise principles is important for developing an effective program. The same principles of exercise apply to everyone at all levels of physical training, from the Olympic-caliber athlete to the weekend jogger.

These basic principles of exercise must be followed.

Regularity

To achieve a training effect, you must exercise often. You should exercise each of the first four fitness components at least three times a week. Infrequent exercise can do more harm than good. Regularity is also important in resting, sleeping, and following a sensible diet.

Progression

The intensity (how hard) and/or duration (how long) of exercise must gradually increase to improve the level of fitness.

Balance

To be effective, a program should include activities that address all the fitness components, since overemphasizing any one of them may hurt the others.

Variety

Providing a variety of activities reduces boredom and increases motivation and progress.

Specificity

Training must be geared toward specific goals. For example, people become better runners if their training emphasizes running. Although swimming is great exercise, it does not improve a 2-mile-run time as much as a running program does.

Recovery

A hard day of training for a given component of fitness should be followed by an easier training day or rest day for that component and/or muscle group(s) to help permit recovery. Another way to allow recovery is to alternate the muscle groups exercised every other day, especially when training for strength and/or muscle endurance.

Overload

The work load of each exercise session must exceed the normal demands placed on the body in order to bring about a training effect.

Exercise has an effect on mental health as well, especially amoung young people. It increases the capacity for learning, increases self esteem and reduces anxiety and stress. Exercise can be therapeutic as well as boosting the circulation of the blood, releasing good feelings and helping low feelings to subside. The benefits of physical fitness include surpassing the average level of health, protecting the immune system, stimulating the metabolism to ensure a loss of excess weight and providing an all round feeling of good health and vitality. Exercise doesn't necessarily mean you have to work up too much of a sweat. Spending half of your lunch hour walking with a colleague counts as exercise.