What is Fitness?

Fitness is not about being thin, having a small waist, or having bulging muscles. To be fit means different things to different people. If you are marathon runner, fitness is about being able to run as far as you can in quickest time possible so it doesn't matter how strong your upper body is. If you are a weightlifter then fitness is about how much weight you can lift and your muscular strength, so most weightlifters are not concerned with cardio fitness.

What is Fitness?

Being fit is the interaction of all the muscles in your body working together to complete a specific task, and the fitter you are, the easier that task will be. It is about your fitness being functional. It is a combination of qualities that enable us to be at our full potential in performing vigorous physical activities. Physical Fitness involves the performance of the heart, lungs, and the muscles of the body. Fitness also influences our mental and emotional development since what we do with our bodies also affects what we can do with our minds.

What comprises Fitness?

No single exercise will result in total fitness. It is important to develop a abalanced exercise program - including exercises such as running, stretching, and weight lifting - that will result in improvements in all aspects of fitness. The four components of fitness are:

• Cardiorespiratory Fitness: the heart's ability to pump blood and deliver oxygen throughout your body.
• Muscular Fitness: the strength and endurance of your muscles.
• Flexibility: the ability to move your joints freely and without pain through a wide range of motion.
• Body Composition: concerned with the portion of your body weight made up of fat.

Total fitness can't be obtained by just running, which reduces rather than increases flexibility and contributes little to upper body muscular fitness. Flexibility training will not improve aerobic or muscular fitness. Resistance training, such as weight lifting, is the best way to improve muscular fitness, but it isn't the most effective way to improve flexibility or aerobic fitness, although it may contribute to a certain extent.

To be physically fit you need to include all the major fitness components in your exercise program. Running and other aerobic exercise combined with stretching to promote flexibility and weight training to develop muscular fitness will gives you a balances program. This will not only leave you leaner and healthier but also better able to perform as a recreational or competitive runner.

Aerobic (Cardiorespiratory) Fitness

Aerobic or cardiorespiratory fitness is measured in terms of aerobic capacity (also known as maximal oxygen uptake or max VO2). It is the ability to perform large-muscle, whole-body physical activity of moderate to high intensity over extended periods of time. This kind of exercise, called aerobic exercise, helps the heart get bigger and stronger, which allows you to be more active, have more energy, reduce risk to heart disease and other illness, and remove stress from your cardiorespiratory system and your life.

Your aerobic capacity can be improved by consistent, progressive aerobic endurance exercise. There are many kinds of aerobic exercises other than running - biking, swimming, walking, skating, etc. The basic idea is to exercise your body steadily and vigorously over a period of at least 20 to 30 minutes at least three to five times a week. The result of such a regular program will be an aerobically fit individual.

Aerobic capacity is expressed as the amount of oxygen consumed in relation to the weight of an individual (milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute [ml/kg/min]). Thus, you can improve your aerobic fitness by improving the amount of work you can do and by losing weight.

Muscular Fitness

Muscular strength is defined as the maximum amount of force a muscle or muscle group can produce during a single contraction or exertion. This is usually measured in fitness tests by how much you can lift in one all-out effort. To be able to carry out daily tasks in a safe manner, or to perform efficiently as a runner or other athlete and to minimize injury, you need a certain amount of muscular strength.

Muscular endurance is the ability to sustain repeated productions of force at low to moderate intensities over extended period of time. A typical fitness test for endurance would be how many sit-ups or push-ups you could do in one minute.

Abdominal muscle fitness helps you achieve good posture and decreases the incidence and severity of low back pain. Upper-body muscle fitness helps you perform daily tasks like lifting a child, changing a tire, moving furniture, etc. Strong legs, abdominals, and upper body also contributes to an improved running form, more power to run at a faster pace and up hills, and decreased chance of injury.

Flexibility

Flexibility is the ability of the muscle to move a joint through its full range of motion. A supple, flexible body, while of no direct benefit to your cardiorespiratory function, does allow you to exercise aerobically with greater ease and more readily perform daily tasks requiring reaching, twisting, and turning your body. It also reduces your chance of injury and of developing back problems.

Unlike weight training, which works muscles against resistance, flexibility exercises involve stretching the muscles. Work on your flexibility before and after your runs and weight training sessions, as well as throughout the week.

Although Physical Fitness and good health influences each other, they are not the same. Healthy people could be physically unfit due to lack of exercise. On the other hand, Physically Fit people perform their everyday tasks effortlessly.

In summary, run, weight train, stretch and be fit.