Being Physically Fit: What Determines Physical Fitness?

While it is crucial to maintain physical fitness, the metrics of such may be hard to determine. What exactly determines physical fitness?

Physical Fitness Explained

According to experts, physical fitness refers to the ability of a person to execute activities each day with optimal strength, endurance, and performance with the management of stress, fatigue, disease, and reduced sedentary behavior.

Generally, there are five components of physical fitness. These are muscular strength, muscular endurance, cardiorespiratory performance, body composition, and flexibility.

Muscular Strength

Generally, when one consistently and regularly works on his muscles, his strength will increase. Any activity that involves muscle use until tired will boost muscle strength as time goes by.

In order to build more muscle, one must exercise muscles regularly and take in sufficient protein.

Muscle Endurance

Muscle endurance refers to a muscle's ability to keep exerting force without getting tired. While strength training leads to bigger muscles, endurance training may not necessarily lead to bigger ones. This is due to the focus on the cardiovascular system. Such training makes sure that muscles get the oxygenated blood necessary for continuous function.

Another important muscle change, specifically among those who train for endurance, involves various muscle tissue types, which are slow twitch and fast twitch fibers. While fast twitch fibers quickly contract, they easily get tired. They consume large amounts of energy and are helpful when sprinting.

On the other hand, slow twitch fibers work best for endurance, as they can keep on doing a task without tiring out. These muscles can be found in the core. Such muscles look red as they depend on oxygenated blood supply and have myoglobin stores.

Various exercises will promote either slow twitch or fast twitch fibers.

Cardiorespiratory Performance

This component of physical fitness involves the capacity of the body to supply fuel in cases of physical activity through the respiratory and circulatory systems of the body. Activities that help boost cardiorespiratory endurance are those that lead to an elevated heart rate for prolonged periods. Such activities include brisk walking, jogging, cycling, and swimming.

Individuals who engage in such activities have higher likelihoods of being fit in this component of physical fitness.

With persistent training, the efficiency of the heart can change. While all exercises increase the general size of the heart, there were differences observed between endurance athletes and strength athletes. The latter was observed to have expanded right and left ventricles, while the former had a thicker heart wall at the left ventricle.

As for the lungs, size does not change, but oxygen usage becomes more efficient. Generally, exercise helps the body become better and more efficient when it comes to the taking in, distribution, and usage of oxygen. This boosts endurance and health in general.

Cardiorespiratory endurance can reduce the risk of certain conditions, such as stroke, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes.

Body Composition

Body composition refers to the relative amounts of bone, water, muscle, and fat in an individual. While one may maintain a certain weight, the ratio of each component within the body can radically change.

Someone who has a high lean mass (or muscle) ratio could be heavier than someone of the same waist circumference and height who does not have as much muscle.

Flexibility

Flexibility refers to a movement range across a joint. It is crucial as it involves the capacity to smoothly link movements together, and it may generally prevent injuries from happening. Flexibility is also joint-specific and may depend on various factors, including tendon and ligament tightness.

There are certain activities that can stretch the tendons, ligaments, and joints to boost flexibility. These include dynamic stretching, ballistic stretching, and static-active stretching.

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