Maintaining an optimal level of physical fitness is something that we should all aspire to achieve and fitness is an important component to achieve it. But What is Fitness and how is a Fitness state achieved? Do not worry, here I explain everything!
This is going to be a concept article, where I will address some important points that you should understand if you are looking to get into the world of body training, and what better way than defining the basis of everything.
What is Fitness?
“Fitness is a general state of health, and more specifically it is called the ability to practice certain physical activities, occupations and daily activities. Good physical shape is generally acquired as a result of proper nutrition, moderate to vigorous physical exercise, and adequate rest. ” Very long and unclear, right? Maybe we could reduce it to:
“Fitness is the ability of the human body to function with energy and in a state of alert, without excessive fatigue and with enough energy to participate in leisure activities, and meet physical stress.”
So, in this sense, Fitness is not just about helping us to have a more muscular, slim body, having a small waist.
Ultimately Fitness would be a combination of qualities that allows us to give our maximum potential when doing any physical activity.
And for this Fitness, or Physical Fitness (let’s use them as synonyms), involves the intervention and performance of different systems of our body, where the heart, lungs and muscles come into play.
In summary? our Cardiorespiratory endurance, muscular strength, muscular endurance and flexibility are taken into account.
And if that were not enough, even Fitness influences our mental and emotional development since what we do with our bodies ultimately ends up affecting what we can do with our minds (and this is generally for the better).
What parts of our body does fitness use?
We already saw what Fitness was, but this would not be complete if we did not give it a more complete and integrative analysis to fully understand the concept. To do this, let’s delve into explaining what are the systems of our body that we must develop to improve our physical and mental health.
Cardio-respiratory resistance
Cardiorespiratory endurance is the way our body uses the supply of fuel during physical activity through the body’s circulatory and respiratory systems.
And the activities that help improve cardiorespiratory endurance are those that cause an elevated heart rate for an extended period of time.
Muscle strength
Muscle strength is defined as the ability to exert muscular work during a certain activity. Something very important that gives us the ability to move or move things.
Muscles can be strengthened by making them work against resistance, from which the term “resistance training” was born; the foundation of any strength training system.
This states that any muscle has to be overloaded to be strengthened. And as you can imagine this can be achieved by lifting weights, training with body weight, elastics, etc.
THE MUSCLE STRUCTURE
Muscles are made up of muscle cells. Each muscle cell contains contractile proteins (actin and myosin) that give the muscle the ability to exert force. And its actin and myosin the proteins that allow muscles to contract.
While the exact mechanism of muscle generation at the cellular level is not yet fully understood, the general principles of development are well known.
If the muscles are exercised regularly, specifically, and if the individual incorporates a sufficient amount of nutrients (mainly protein); muscles can get bigger and stronger.
Proper training causes muscle cells to hypertrophy (enlarge). This hypertrophy is caused by the increase in the scale of protein manufacture within cells.
MUSCLE ENDURANCE
Muscular endurance is the ability of a muscle to continue exerting force without tiring.
In this sense, muscular resistance training helps develop slow-twitch fibers in muscles, but does not generate larger muscles.
Endurance can be improved with cardio-respiratory activities, such as jogging, dancing, or cycling. And this is because, in these types of training, the body focuses more on using the cardiovascular system, thus ensuring that the muscles receive enough oxygenated blood they need to stay active for the required time.
THE BODY COMPOSITION
The equivalent ratio of water, muscle, bone and fat constitutes the body composition, that is, the muscle / fat ratio of the body.
And that is why we must always bear in mind that even though someone gains weight, that does not mean that their level of fat is higher, that is to say that because you weigh more you will not be more “fat or fat”.
And this is a very important concept to take into account within the world of Fitness.
Keep in mind that people who have a high muscle-to-fat ratio will weigh more than those with the same height and higher fat ratio. This happens because the muscle weighs more than the same volume of fat.
BODY FLEXIBILITY
It is the range of motion of a joint. Which means an improvement in the ability to perform movements, thus helping to prevent injuries and improving our quality of life.
Flexibility is increased by various activities, there are three types of exercise that are generally used to increase flexibility: static stretching, dynamic stretching, and ballistic stretching.
Conclusion about what fitness means
As we have already seen, physical conditioning or Fitness is the condition of being physically fit and healthy and involves attributes that include mental acuity, cardiorespiratory endurance, muscular strength, muscular endurance, body composition and flexibility.
While there is no standard definition for Fitness, each individual can have their own personal understanding of what Fitness means.
For some people, being in shape will mean the ability to complete a marathon, for others lifting a lot of weight in the gym, for others, it could mean jogging around a square without getting out of breath.
We could say that your own definition of Fitness will be influenced by your interests, physical abilities and goals.
Fitness could be understood as something more general above specific sports disciplines.
Now, no matter what the definition is, the important thing is that each person understands and follow their own personal definition of Fitness, but without forgetting to consider all the points that we have seen and accompany the development of each body system that we have analyzed.
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