The Right Fitness for You

Fitness is the simplest and most effective way to keep in a healthy shape.  Fitness, as defined, is a set of attribution that people have or achieve that relates to the ability to perform physical activity. (USDHHS, 1996) As defined, it is made up of components that will determine the right physical activity that can greatly develop the person’s physical ability. Fitness is made up of five major components that can contribute to your overall fitness. 

That means you would have to work all five components to ensure that you achieve optimal fitness. These components are the cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength, body composition, and flexibility. All of these have specific workout or exercises that will deal with improving these components. The cardiovascular endurance is the ability of the body’s circulatory and respiratory systems to supply fuel during sustained physical activity. These activities refer to exercises that will keep your heart rate elevated at a safe level. 

Muscular strength focuses on the ability of the muscle to continue to perform without causing fatigue. You can work them against resistance, through weight or gravity. Body composition is the relative amount of muscle, fat, bone, and other vital parts of the body. Most often, people have the wrong concept of getting their body composition. This is not assessed by your bathroom scales but you need this in order to determine the appropriate management of your health. Lastly, flexibility is the range of motion around a joint. Being flexible prevents you from getting injured and this can go on all the stages of your life. You can acquire this by regularly stretching your body before and most especially, after workouts.

Fitness and physical activity

One of the misconceptions about fitness is most people think that it is about having strenuous activity. Some would get lazy over the idea of working out. To redefine fitness, it is actually about being active. Survey shows that only thirty percent of the adult population in the United States only gets the recommended thirty minutes physical activity, while twenty-five percent are not active at all. Inactivity is the key reason for the surge of type-2 diabetes in America because it promotes insulin resistance and other factors that trigger other disease. 

The problem is instead of moving around, we tend to get so attached with sitting down and let the machine do most of the moving chores. It usually boils down to our preferences. Elevators are preferred rather than taking the stairs. Riding cars instead of using the bicycle or just walk a couple of blocks. The secret here is to just move around. Walk, run, jog, go up and down with the stairs, swim, play…these are the stuffs that are also called physical activities. It is not about lifting weights or signing up into gym memberships. There are more practical ways into getting physically fit and stay active.

Appropriate fitness plan

Although it has been known to all of us that fitness is for everybody, no age limit, whether your underweight or overweight, or for men or women. Fitness is very vital for overall wellness and being. But, it has restrictions too. Before doing any physical activity or deciding to your own exercise plan, always make sure that you set an appointment with your doctor. If you have any cardiac factors, the doctor may conduct stress test to establish a set of safety level of exercise. 

For example, patients with diabetic retinopathy, weight lifting, jogging, or high impact aerobics is risky because it can cause further damage to blood vessels and possible retinal detachment. If ever you feel that any physical activity makes you physically challenged, refer to an exercise physiologist who can design a program that is right for your fitness.

Understanding Muscle and Fitness

Muscle and fitness go hand in hand with regards to our wellness. It is very essential to us, not only because we wanted to stay fit but it is a very good investment for our body. 

There are many underlying benefits and importance of muscle and fitness for us. Even though you have not notice any weight changes in your exercises, don’t stop because it actually maintains the full mobility of our muscles. As you go over with your muscle and fitness plan, always remember these guidelines that will guide you to your over-all wellness.

Muscle and fitness uncovered

There are many muscle and fitness fiction that you may have heard or encountered. One of them is the rules in repetition and the number of sets that should be taken with each exercise group. The twelve repetition rule has been misunderstood in some ways. Although the standard prescription for a repetition is from eight to twelve, it does not actually help you in achieving muscle gain. Counting eight to twelve repetitions only provides balance but does not generate greater tension level. So, no matter how many exercise variation you may perform, it will not affect your muscle and fitness gain. To be able to achieve greater tension level, you must vary heavier weight but with lesser repetitions. High tension enables your muscles to gain maximum strength. 

The next thing to remember is the duration of the tension, in order to have an effective muscle gain you must have long tension time. This will boost the muscle because it generates the structure around the muscle fibers, thus improving endurance. You must change the number of your repetitions as you adjust the weight to stimulate all types of muscle growth. Another muscle fiction that needs clarification is the three set rule. Now, you must keep in mind that the number of sets that you perform should always be based on your goals. To make this rule simpler, memorize this simple equation; more repetition means fewer sets and vice-versa. So it’s not really a big deal whether you do the three set rule or not. Last one to tackle is the three to four exercises per group. The truth is, having more repetition to one muscle group is not effective as it may sound. Instead, do thirty to fifty repetitions to each muscle group to have satisfactory muscle and fitness result.

Muscle and fitness Precaution

Injuries in muscle and fitness are more likely due to improper posture and work-out. Our muscles work in group, in order to stabilize the spine. As we work on a specific work-out routine, our body automatically activates the muscle groups that are needed most. So if you lift much weights because you want to target having a great six-pack abs, it can recruit wrong muscle and limit the function of the right muscle. Hence, the chance of having injury is elevated. If you are targeting a six pack, cross out the “lift weight, draw abs” myth. Instead, look for appropriate muscle and fitness routines that only target the right muscles in the abdominals. Aside from that, a certain study from Memphis University states that when your knees are moving beyond the toes during the squat, the knee stress increases up to thirty percent. 

However, if the forward movement of your knee is restricted, your hip stress will go ten times higher. Most people would disregard having proper posture when executing some type of exercise. to avoid having unwanted injury, always focus on your upper body position and less on your knee. To do this, you have to keep your torso in up-right position when doing squats and lunges to reduce stress on the hips and lower back. To stay upright, you squeeze your shoulder blades together and keep this position as you squat. Then keep your forearm at ninety degree angle from the floor. As you go on with your exercise, always start with a low weight and work slowly to have impressive result on your muscle and fitness.

Nutrition and Exercise, a body balance keyword

Better nutrition and exercise are the best two things for a person to dream off. Lack of both can affect the balance of human life. It is a fact that each and every person should overcome the nutritional deficiency in their life. One might go to doctors', seeking help for better nutritional diets for their body and might end up with tablets or capsules to maintain it. Many might think this is a good practice, but according to some studies, the more you get to the nutrition providing capsules or tablets, the more the chance for their body to get weak, using capsules and tablets instead of a good diet to get the best results on your nutrition and exercise is often not the best choice and for that reason is always best to consult a professional.

Natural ways to keep up the body with nutrition balance is to maintain the food intake. A little bit careful in the food can save you a lot of money which you you can spend on doctor's fee and medicines. There are a lot of ways in which you can make your body nutrition rich. Following some simple steps, you will be able to grow up a lot in the nutrition chart if you really want to see the results on your nutrition and exercise efforts.

1: Include more fruits in your food.

This will make your body stable in all conditions. Fruits got the nutritional power to maintain the body balanced. They are rich in all kind of necessities needed for our body. If you get a chance to watch a person, who has more fruits intake in his food, you could notice that he will be more energetic and have a balanced BMI (Body Mass Index).

2: Include plant sources in your food.

By plant food, I mean bread, rice, cereals, grain products etc which has good amount of energy. It will generate a good amount of energy to each cells in your body and also to the perfect functioning of all the internal organs, which in turn result  in good health. 

3: Limiting intake of heavy food or junk foods.

Having a lot of heavy food or junk food in your diet, I am sure you are not going to make it up a good way in the long run. The processed foods in all manner will affect your body in worst case. Limiting the intake of junk food will obviously decrease your body toxins. 

4: Exercise to maintain the nutritional balance.

Nutrition and exercise, as we discussed above, are interlinked. The better the exercise, better the nutritional balance in the body. Even if you get all the nutrition rich food in your diet, you still have to look through if it is correctly supplied to all your body organs. To ensure this fact one should have better exercises, atleast in alternate days. The exercise will carry out or confirms the body itself that it is getting the nutrition supplied to all parts and that too in required measure. Being active for half a day would be great for a person to get the nutrition supplied to each parts. Walking or Jogging is a good habit which one should develop during the childhood days itself to make sure there is no nutritional unbalance in your body.

5: Limiting alcohol consumption.

Limiting the alcohol consumption would be great to maintain the balance of the body. Intake of alcohol would negatively affect the body, which will ruin the body nutrition and increase the toxin content in the body.

Keeping these things in mind, a better nutrition can be achieved for your body. As I said before, nutrition and exercise are interlinked. Lack of any one of these might affect the body. Its our body,  lets give everything it need.