Components of Physical Fitness
Aim: How can we tell if someone is physically fit?
Notes:
Physical fitness refers to the ability of your heart, lungs and muscles to supply oxygen and nutrients throughout the body and meet the body's energy demands.
The Four Components of Fitness are:
Cardiovascular Endurance- the ability of the heart and lungs to supply the cells with oxygen.
Muscle Strength and Endurance- is the ability of your muscles to work against resistance for a period of time.
Flexibility- the ability to bend and stretch without causing injury to muscles, tendons or ligaments.
Body Composition- lean tissue-to-fat ratio: is usually determined by an individual's height and weight.
Types of Exercise:
Aerobic exercise (cardiorespiratory exercise) involves large muscle moving rhythmically at target heart rate for 20-60 minutes. It improves the ability of the cardiovascular system (heart, lungs) to supply oxygen to the body. Examples include biking, swimming, jogging, jumping rope, brisk walking.
Anaerobic exercise includes quick, explosive exercise that strengthens the muscles or works against a resistance. Muscle strength can be inproved by doing weight bearing exercises where muscles are working against a resistance such as gravity or weights (examples are weight lifting, situps, pushups). Sprinting is an example of doing anaerobic exercise that will improve muscle endurance.
Stretching is an important part of physical fitness because it prevents injury from occurring during exerciese, but it also helps prevent overall injuries (such as pulling a muscle in the back, or "throwing out" your back).
How to calculate your target heart rate.
Your target heart rate is the rate your heart should beat during aerobic exercise. It is fast enought to give your body a workout, but not too fast (so that you can do the exercise for a longer period of time and enjoy the workout).
Your Target heart rate is 50-65% of your maximum heart rate.
Your Maximum heart rate is 220 minus your age.
For example:
An 18 year old's target heart rate is in the range of 101- 131
220-18 = 202
50% of 202 = 101
65% of 202= 131
Creating a workout with the components of fitness:
When creating a workout, it is important to come up with a goal. For example, if you want to improve your muscular strength, your workouts may consist of weight training (be careful not to work the same muscle groups every day- they need time to recover.) You will want to have some cardiovascular training on recovery days so get rid of any lactic acid build up in your muscles so the next workout is much more effecient.
Or, if your goal is to increase your endurance, you may want to do exercises that focus on cardiovascular endurance (running, biking). Make sure you do exercises that you enjoy doing so that exercising is more fun.
Always make sure you warm up and stretch before ANY workout and cool down and stretch after EVERY workout in order to prevent injuries.
And... DRINK WATER to replace lost fluids through sweat!