Becoming and staying physically fit is an important part of achieving optimal health. A well-rounded exercise program can improve your health in a number of ways. It promotes weight loss, strengthens muscles and bones, keeps the heart and lungs strong, and helps to protect against chronic disease. There are four essential elements of physical fitness: cardiorespiratory endurance, muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, and maintaining a healthful body composition. Each component offers specific health benefits, but optimal health requires some degree of balance between all four.

Some forms of exercise confer multiple benefits, which can help you to balance the different elements of physical fitness. For example, riding a bicycle for thirty minutes or more not only builds cardiorespiratory endurance, it also improves muscle strength and muscle endurance. Some forms of yoga can also build muscle strength and endurance, along with flexibility. However, meeting fitness standards in all four categories generally requires incorporating a range of activities into your regular routine. As you exercise regularly, your body will begin to change and you will notice that you are able to continue your activity longer and with greater ease.

The Essential Elements of Physical Fitness

Cardiorespiratory Endurance

Cardiorespiratory endurance is built by aerobic exercise, which involves activities that increase your heart rate and breathing such as walking, jogging, or biking. Aerobic exercise is continuous exercise (lasting more than 2 minutes) that can range from low to high levels of intensity. It increases heart and breathing rates to meet increased demands for oxygen in working muscles. Regular, moderate aerobic activity— about thirty minutes at a time for five days per week—trains the body to deliver oxygen more efficiently, which strengthens the heart and lungs and reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Strengthening your heart muscle and increasing the blood volume pumped each heartbeat boosts your ability to supply your body’s cells with oxygen and nutrients, to remove carbon dioxide and metabolic wastes. It also leads to a lower resting heart rate for healthy individuals. In addition to the benefits of aerobic training for cardiovascular health, it is also an excellent way to maintain a healthy weight.

Muscle Strength

Muscle strength is developed and maintained by weight or resistance training, often called anaerobic exercise. Anaerobic exercise consists of short duration, high intensity movements that rely on immediately available energy sources and require little or no oxygen during the activity. This type of high intensity training is used to build muscle strength with short, high-intensity activities. Building muscle strength and endurance is not just crucial for athletes and bodybuilders—it’s important for children, seniors, and everyone in between. The support that your muscles provide allows you to work, play, and live more efficiently.

Strength training often involves the use of resistance machines, resistance bands, free weights, or other tools. However, you do not need to pay for a gym membership or expensive equipment to strengthen your muscles. Homemade weights, such as plastic bottles filled with sand, can work just as well. You can also use your own body weight and do push-ups, leg squats, abdominal crunches, and other exercises to build your muscles. If strength training is performed at least twice a week, it can help to improve muscle strength and to increase bone strength. It can help manage health conditions like diabetes, arthritis, dementia, hypertension, and many others. Strength training can also help you to maintain muscle mass during a weight-loss program.

Flexibility

Flexibility is the range of motion available to your joints. Yoga, tai chi, Pilates, and stretching exercises work to improve this element of fitness. Stretching not only improves your range of motion, it also promotes better posture, and helps you perform activities that can require greater flexibility, such as chores around the house. In addition to working on flexibility, older adults should include balance exercises in their regular routine. Balance tends to deteriorate with age, which can result in falls and fractures.

Body Composition

Body composition is the proportion of fat and fat-free mass (which includes bones, muscles, and organs) in your body. A healthy and physically fit individual has a greater proportion of muscle and smaller proportion of fat than an unfit individual of the same weight. Although habitual physical activity can promote a more healthful body composition, other factors like age, gender, genetics, and diet contribute to an individual’s body composition. You can refer back to Unit 7 for a detailed discussion on body composition, how it is measured, and how it is used as an indicator for health.

The Benefits of Phsyical Activity

Regular physical activity is one of the best things you can do to achieve optimal health. Individuals who are physically active for 150 minutes per week lower the risk of dying early by 33 percent compared to those who are inactive.3 The 2018 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans were issued by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to provide evidence-based guidelines to Americans aged 3 and older about how to improve health and reduce chronic disease risk through physical activity. You can review the guidelines here, including recommendations for children, adolescents, and adults.4

Key Guidelines for Adults

• Adults should move more and sit less throughout the day. Some physical activity is better than none. Adults who sit less and do any amount of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity gain some health benefits.
• For substantial health benefits, adults should do at least 150 minutes (2 hours and 30 minutes) to 300 minutes (5 hours) a week of moderate-intensity, or 75 minutes (1 hour and 15 minutes) to 150 minutes (2 hours and 30 minutes) a week of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity, or an equivalent combination of moderate- and vigorous-intensity aerobic activity. Preferably, aerobic activity should be spread throughout the week.
• Additional health benefits are gained by engaging in physical activity beyond the equivalent of 300 minutes (5 hours) of moderate-intensity physical activity a week.
• Adults should also do muscle-strengthening activities of moderate or greater intensity and that involve all major muscle groups on 2 or more days a week, as these activities provide additional health benefits.

Source: 2018 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans

Improving your overall fitness involves sticking with an exercise program on a regular basis. If you are nervous or unsure about becoming more active, the good news is that moderate-intensity activities, such as brisk walking, are safe for most people. Also, the health advantages of becoming active far outweigh the risks. Physical activity not only helps to maintain your weight, it also provides a wealth of benefits—physical, mental, and emotional.

Table 10.1. Physical and emotional benefits of exercise.

The FITT Principle

One helpful tool for putting together an exercise plan is the FITT acronym. FITT stands for:

Frequency – how often you exercise

Intensity – how hard you work during your exercise session

Time – how long you exercise for

Type – what kind of exercise you do

You can manipulate the principles of FITT to better meet your exercise goals and to boost your motivation to exercise. You will be more likely to stick to a workout plan that has flexibility and works with your lifestyle. By changing up the types of exercise you do, varying the intensity of your workouts, and by choosing days of the week and times of the day that work best with your schedule, you can create a plan for success with your exercise goals. As you design your physical activity plan, make sure to outline the components of the FITT principle to establish more detailed goals and create purpose for your workouts.

Part Two: Cultural Awareness

Dealing with Inactivity

Inactive adults or those who don’t yet do 150 minutes of physical activity a week should work gradually toward this goal. The initial amount of activity should be at a light or moderate intensity, for short periods of time, with the sessions spread throughout the week. The good news is that “some is better than none.”

People gain some health benefits even when they do as little as 60 minutes a week of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity.

To reduce risk of injury, it is important to increase the amount of physical activity gradually over a period of weeks to months. For example, an inactive person could start with a walking program consisting of 5 minutes of slow walking several times each day, 5 to 6 days a week. The length of time could then gradually be increased to 10 minutes per session, 3 times a day, and the walking speed could be increased slowly.

Muscle-strengthening activities should also be gradually increased over time. Initially, these activities can be done just 1 day a week starting at a light or moderate level of effort. Over time, the number of days a week can be increased to 2, and then possibly to more than 2. Each week, the level of effort (intensity) can be increased slightly until it becomes moderate to high.

Flexibility Activities

Flexibility is an important part of physical fitness. Some types of physical activity, such as dancing, require more flexibility than others. Stretching exercises are effective in increasing flexibility, and thereby can allow people to more easily do activities that require greater flexibility. For this reason, flexibility activities are an appropriate part of a physical activity program, even though they have no known health benefits and it is unclear whether they reduce risk of injury. Time spent doing flexibility activities by themselves does not count toward meeting the aerobic or muscle-strengthening guidelines (Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans).

Warm-up and Cool-down

Warm-up and cool-down activities are an acceptable part of a person’s physical activity plan. Commonly, the warm-up and cool-down involve doing an activity at a slower speed or lower intensity. A warm-up before moderate- or vigorous-intensity aerobic activity allows a gradual increase in heart rate and breathing at the start of the episode of activity. A cool-down after activity allows a gradual decrease at the end of the episode. Time spent doing warm-up and cool-down may count toward meeting the aerobic activity Guidelines if the activity is at least moderate intensity (for example, walking briskly as a warm-up before jogging). A warm-up for muscle-strengthening activity commonly involves doing exercises with lighter weight.

Getting and Staying Active: Real-Life Examples

Adults can meet the Physical Activity Guidelines in all sorts of ways and with many types of physical activity. The choices of types and amounts of physical activity depend on personal health and fitness goals.

Here are three examples.

Jean: An Inactive Middle-Aged Woman

• Her goals: Jean sets a goal of doing 1 hour a day of moderate-intensity aerobic activity on 5 days a week (a total of 300 minutes a week). Weighing 220 pounds, Jean is obese and wants to lose about 1 pound of weight each week.
• Starting out: Jean cuts back on her caloric intake and starts walking 5 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes in the evening most days of the week. She walks at a 2.5 mile-an-hour pace. Although physical activity tables show this to be light-intensity activity, for her level of fitness and fatness, it is appropriate moderate–intensity activity.
• Making good progress: Two months later, Jean is comfortably walking 30 to 40 minutes at moderate intensity to and from her bus stop every day. She then adds variety to her activity by alternating among walking, riding a stationary cycle, and low-impact aerobics. She also begins muscle-strengthening activities, using elastic bands twice each week.
• Reaching her goal: Eventually, Jean works up to 300 minutes a week of moderate-intensity aerobic activity, including her brisk walks to and from the bus stop. She has lost 40 pounds of weight in 1 year, with most of the weight loss occurring the previous 6 months when she mastered her diet and was able to do greater amounts of physical activity.

Douglas: An Active Middle-Aged Man

• His goal and current activity pattern: Douglas was a soccer player in his youth. His goal is to get back into shape by becoming a regular recreational runner. In addition to his job operating heavy equipment, he walks 30 to 40 minutes a day on 5 days each week. He also lifts weights 2 days a week.
• Starting out: Douglas starts a walk/jog program with a co-worker and plans to gradually replace walking with jogging and then running. The first week he goes out on 5 days, walking for 25 minutes and jogging for 5 minutes.
• Making good progress: Each week, Douglas gradually increases the time spent jogging (vigorous-intensity activity) and reduces the time spent walking (moderate–intensity activity). He also continues his weight-lifting program.
• Reaching his goal: Eventually, Douglas is running 30 to 45 minutes 4 days a week and lifting weights 2 days a week. He goes for a 1-hour bicycle ride on most weekends.

Anita

• Her goals and current activity pattern: Anita plays league basketball (vigorous-intensity activity) 4 days each week for 90 minutes each day. She wants to reduce her risk of injury from doing too much of one kind of activity (this is called an overuse injury).
• Starting out: Anita starts out by cutting back her basketball playing to 3 days each week. She begins to bicycle to and from campus (30 minutes each way) instead of driving her car. She also joins a yoga class that meets twice each week.
• Reaching her goal: Eventually, Anita is bicycling 3 days each week to and from campus in addition to playing basketball. Her yoga class helps her to build and maintain strength and flexibility.

Achieving Target Levels of Physical Activity: Possibilities Are Endless

These examples show how it’s possible to meet the Guidelines by doing moderate-intensity or vigorous-intensity activity or a combination of both. Physical activity at this level provides substantial health benefits.

• Ways to get the equivalent of 150 minutes (2 hours and 30 minutes) of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity a week plus muscle-strengthening activities:
• Thirty minutes of brisk walking (moderate intensity) on 5 days, exercising with resistance bands (muscle strengthening) on 2 days;
• Thirty minutes of brisk walking on 2 days, 60 minutes (1 hour) of social dancing (moderate intensity) on 1 evening, 30 minutes of mowing the lawn (moderate intensity) on 1 afternoon, heavy gardening (muscle strengthening) on 2 days;
• Thirty minutes of an aerobic dance class on 1 morning (vigorous intensity), 30 minutes of running on 1 day (vigorous intensity), 30 minutes of brisk walking on 1 day (moderate intensity), calisthenics (such as sit-ups, push-ups) on 3 days (muscle strengthening);
• Thirty minutes of biking to and from work on 3 days (moderate intensity), playing softball for 60 minutes on 1 day (moderate intensity), using weight machines on 2 days (muscle-strengthening on 2 days); and
• Forty-five minutes of doubles tennis on 2 days (moderate intensity), lifting weights after work on 1 day (muscle strengthening), hiking vigorously for 30 minutes and rock climbing (muscle strengthening) on 1 day.

Personalize the Benefits of Regular Physical Activity

Adults need to identify benefits of personal value to them. For many people, the health benefits, which are the focus of the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, are compelling enough. For others, different reasons are key motivators to be active. For example, physical activity:

• Provides opportunities to enjoy recreational activities, often in a social setting;
• Improves personal appearance;
• Provides a chance to help a spouse lose weight;
• Improves the quality of sleep;
• Reduces feelings of low energy; and
• Gives older adults a greater opportunity to live independently in the community.

Set Personal Goals for Physical Activity

The Guidelines alone don’t provide enough information for individuals to decide the types and amounts of activity that are appropriate for them. Individuals should set goals for activity that allow them to achieve benefits they value. Simple goals are fine. For example, a brisk walk in the neighborhood with friends for 45 minutes 3 days a week and walking to lunch twice a week may be just the right approach for someone who wants to increase both physical activity and social opportunities.

In setting goals, people can consider doing a variety of activities and try both indoor and outdoor activities. In particular, public parks and recreation areas in the United States offer opportunities to experience nature and be physically active at the same time.

The best physical activity is the one that is enjoyable enough to do regularly.

Course Contents at a Glance. Provided by: Lumen Learning. License: CC BY: Attribution

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-fitness/