Fitness
Yet, majority of people involved in fitness, many of them don’t know the actual meaning of fitness. Being fit is about not only having a low body fat percentage. It is one’s ability to do a particular task without failure. For example, many times we hear someone asking “are you fit for ‘so-and-so’ job or position? In the same manner, according to human physiology, we have 5 components to check whether we are fit or not in our daily life circumstances.
- Cardiorespiratory endurance
- Muscular Endurance
- Musculoskeletal strength
- Flexibility
- Ideal Body Composition.
Cardiorespiratory endurance:
The ability of cardiovascular and respiratory systems to supply oxygen-carrying blood to the working muscle groups for a prolonged period without failure.
The body has a capacity to supply oxygenated blood through cardiorespiratory system to a certain extent. The rate of supply (oxygenated blood) varies depending on your activity, activity type, and environment. With an increase in speed and workload, your heart rate will increase; this is called conditioning phase which is necessary for maintaining homeostasis. As soon as you stop the activity, your heart rate will decrease back to resting state known as post-exercise recovery period. The more intense your activity level is, greater chances you would feel drops in gasping breath after long runs; this tendency could be due to possible dehydration, lung overloading and muscle fatigue caused by those factors
By incorporating aerobic exercises progressively, body adapts to the load of requirement in excessive oxygen and blood supply during the activity, it compensates by forming new cells for better oxygen absorption and formation of new capillaries for faster gaseous exchange and increased oxygen uptake by the targeted cells to perform more.
Muscular Endurance:
It is the ability of skeletal muscles to generate force sub maximally for a prolonged time without getting fatigued. For a better understanding, the working muscles hit a failure point and, are forced to stop the activity by creating heavy burning sensations before hitting failure of cardiorespiratory system.
People can relate to this condition where they get intense pain in the leg muscles, forcing them to stop after a particular distance covered at a heart rate that is not as elevated as that high to a point of failure like heavy gasping while taking breath.
It is activity specific task and if a person gained progress in long-distance running, it cannot be carry forwarded to cycling or swimming. But the cardiorespiratory endurance will get benefitted from the practice of supplying more oxygen.
Musculoskeletal strength:
It is one’s ability to generate maximum force against the resistance in one maximal effort. Most people think the muscles alone do the work when it comes to a strong job. But in reality, muscles along with bones and connective tissues sets the job done. The collective strength of muscles and the skeletal system improves by adding certain kinds of movements to the routine.
Let’s say a person chooses to train isolate movements, though it puts tension on the muscle, the stress concentrated only on 1 joint, because of single-joint movement activity. On the other hand, if practiced with the structural (when the entire skeleton is placed under load) or compound movements( in which two or more joints involved in movements), the scope of gaining strength of joint tissues is high compared to that of single joint movements. Because the load is shared among multiple joints, it reduces the risk of injury when practiced till failure. Anyways it is not suggested to train till failure.
Hence, Practicing the lifting of heavier loads will result in symmetric muscular contribution respectively to perform the task and retain the strength gained in normal/no resistance activities.
Flexibility:
It is the ability to move about the full range of motion among all the joints without injury. To attain and maintain optimal flexibility, one should practice static passive stretching after every workout session, since it is the time when the tissues possess elevated temperature reducing the risk of injury. Lack of flexibility can lead to various biomechanical complications and asymmetric muscle tension on the connective tissues.
A person who works on a computer with a lack of ergonomic support will probably experience the pain in their back. Because, it can be the cause of asymmetric muscle tension on the bone/connective tissues that makes one side to slack and the other side to stiff. It is much deeper in the actual scenario to figure out the root point. Pain concentrated at a certain point can be the cause of being in one static position for a long period.
Ideal Body Composition:
The ratio of body fat to lean body mass is referred as the ideal body composition. The lower the body fat you have, the more lean and appealing you look. Though the fat is not a direct contributor of movements produced, it can provide energy by metabolizing fat cells in a fasted state under certain energy pathways. Fat doesn’t have a regular shape as muscle tissue has. Thus we should aim for a low body fat percentage. The advantages are more than that of an appealing look, some of them are
a) Increased range of motion at joints.
b) low injury risk
c) Higher Motor Unit recruitment
d) More Muscle fibers involvement in a movement when used in the full range of motion.
e) Better functionality.
Because of some misconceptions, people get to the conclusion that lack of activity is what promotes fat gain. But it is not true, whether you practice movements or not body’s metabolic pathway is different for each macronutrient. Let’s say after exercising, if you fail to provide enough protein and load with simple carbohydrates, you will not get that desired body you expect.
Without physical movements, one can achieve the ideal body composition but the benefits of exercise are much more than everyone thinks regularly.