What are the components that make up fitness?

Physical fitness is one of the core conditions of health that ensures the effective working of the entire body system. Social, mental, physical, and emotional health are the vital components of fitness and help perform the daily work activities effectively.

Learn the details of the components of physical fitness in this article.

What is Physical Fitness?

Physical fitness is the condition that helps us feel, look, and do our best. It pertains to the efficient working of the body system, allowing us to remain healthy and perform our daily chores perfectly. Efficient, here means performing the daily activities with the least effort.

Physical fitness involves the optimum performance of the lungs, heart, and muscles. What we do physically directly impacts our minds. In other words, fitness somewhat influences our mental alertness and emotional stability. We need to take measures like engaging in physical activities, improving our diet, and the daily dose of exercise to remain physically fit.

Types of Physical Fitness

Generally, physical fitness has 11 parts. Six out of them are health-related, while five are skill-based. Each type of physical fitness is vital for optimum performance in any activities, say sports. The health-based physical fitness includes flexibility, cardiorespiratory endurance, power, strength, body composition, and muscular endurance.

These aspects prepare the body to work daily energetically. Skill-related physical fitness helps one perform well in sports and physical activities involving motor skills. Here you can find out the best way to stay fit.

Components of Physical Fitness

Different schools, health clubs, and fitness centres consider these health-related components of physical fitness:

1. Cardiovascular Endurance

Cardiovascular endurance means the effective coordination of the lungs and heart to provide fuel and oxygen to the body during times of sustained workload. Effective execution of cardiovascular exercises improves the elasticity of the blood vessels, heart's contraction strength, and blood efficacy in carrying oxygen. Trainers use Step Test and Cooper Run to assess the cardiovascular endurance of the trainees.

2. Flexibility

Although often overlooked, flexibility is the most vital parameter of physical fitness. Insufficient flexibility makes the growth of the joints and muscles stiff, limiting one's movement. Flexibility training allows the body to move through its fullest motion range without facing stiffness or pain.

It plays a vital role in unhindered movement and affects one's agility, coordination, and balance. A perfect motion reduces the risk of injury and improves athletic performance, directly impacting one's fitness.

3. Muscular Strength

The maximum amount of force a muscle can produce is muscular strength. It is the power that helps you lift or carry heavy objects in a single go. Resistance training like bodyweight exercises, weightlifting, and resistance band exercises help improve muscle strength.

Climbing hills, cycling, and running are also better ways to enhance muscle strength. One-rep-max is the common way to test one's muscular strength. Improved muscle strength promotes physical fitness as it prompts the body to use more calories to burn fat.

4. Body Composition

Body composition is the most crucial component of physical fitness. It is the ratio of lean mass to the amount of fat in the body. Lean mass is the total body mass of bones, muscles, and organs. It is also known as the BMI or Body Mass Index, a ratio yardstick to analyse one's physical fitness. High composition of fat increases the risk of heart complications and heart disease.

5. Muscular Endurance

Muscular endurance is the ability of muscles to perform activities without feeling fatigued. This physical fitness involves multiple repetitions of any exercise, whether resistance training, weight training, or enhancing cardiovascular endurance. The better the muscle endurance, the less fatigued you will feel.

Skill-related components of physical fitness are the fitness modules relating to specific tasks, like sports. These components help the athletes to improve in different areas like balance in gymnastics, speed in football, etc.

1. Agility

Agility is the capacity to change direction effectively and quickly while maintaining body posture. If you struggle to move side-to-side and balance yourself, agility exercises will help you improve your performance.

It helps one acquire the skill of pivoting quickly, moving limbs, and turning. Agility training improves balance, mind-body coordination, flexibility, and one's recovery time as well.

2. Reaction Time

Reaction time is the time taken to respond to external stimuli. The lower the reaction time, the better the skill is. Running at full speed or running on a treadmill are some ways of improving reaction time.

3. Power

It is both a physical and skill-based component of physical fitness. Power is the maximum force a muscle group can apply in the shortest period. Power is the muscle's ability to exert optimum force in a short time, like swimming or running. Power contributes directly to cardiovascular endurance.

4. Speed

Speed is one of the skill-related components of physical fitness that directly links to agility. It refers to the movement of upper and lower limbs on the ground fast, like throwing, grabbing, or pulling objects. The speed training exercise is vital for athletes and those persons who handle heavy objects.

5. Accuracy

Accuracy is the body's ability to direct the body muscles and force towards a particular direction. Both accuracy and agility help enhance performances in throwing and jumping events like javelin throw, long jump, and high jump. Consistent practice, concentration, and meditation help improve accuracy.

Also Read: Exercise to Increase Height: 30 Exercises That Work!

Which is Not a Physical Component of Physical Fitness?

Physical fitness is all about one's ability to perform activities efficiently without feeling tired or stressed. Logic is not a physical component of physical fitness as it has nothing to do with physical, mental, and social health. Working on the health and skill components of physical fitness, consequently, helps them remain focused on their aim.

Summing Up on Components of Physical Fitness

Keeping these components of fitness in mind helps one reach fitness goals. One must incorporate these skills into their daily fitness routine to boost physical and mental health. Moreover, it helps one learn different skills effectively without feeling tired.

References

What is Physical Fitness? - https://medical.mit.edu/sites/default/files/Physical_Fitness_101.pdf

So you want to get fit? Amazing, you’ve come to the right place! 

Deciding to improve your fitness is the start of a very empowering and rewarding health journey, but there’s no doubt it can be challenging, too!  It’s normal to have some questions about what it truly means to be fit and what you should be including in your weekly routine to ensure you’re making progress. 

When people hear the word fitness, they often think of how easily a person can run 10km or complete a bunch of burpees, but holistic fitness is about so much more than our go-to physical activity. It can help to think of fitness as an umbrella term, with five main components:

1. Cardiovascular endurance
2. Muscular strength
3. Muscular endurance
4. Flexibility
5. Body composition 

A well-balanced workout routine will factor in all five of these components and give some love to each of them so you can reap the maximum health benefits! So what does each component mean and what sort of activity should you be doing to improve it? Let’s break it down.

Also known as aerobic fitness, this refers to how efficiently and effectively your body can take in oxygen and deliver it to your body’s tissues through your cardiovascular system - that’s your heart, lungs and blood vessels. 

Boosting your cardiovascular endurance means doing any form of exercise that works your cardiovascular system for an extended period of time. This is any kind of cardio activity that gets you puffing - think brisk walking, running, cycling, swimming, jump rope, boxing, circuit training and dancing, to name a few! 

Mayo Clinic recommends you get at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity each week, or enjoy a combination of the two. An easy way to tell the difference is by using the talk test. If you can talk, you’re exercising at a moderate intensity. If talking is difficult, you’re exercising at a vigorous intensity. 

Not only does this type of exercise work to keep your heart, lungs and circulatory system healthy, it can also make many of your daily activities much easier, whether that’s a HIIT workout, playing with your kids, going for a walk with a friend, running to catch the bus or dancing at a concert. 

This refers to the strength and power your muscles have that allows you to lift heavy objects. The more muscular strength you have, the more weight you can lift. 

Building your muscular strength isn’t just about being able to lift heavy weights or flex big biceps, it’s also important for your bone health, posture, balance and stability. Working on your strength can help you to lift things like weights, groceries, luggage, furniture and even your kids with greater ease and a reduced risk of injury. 

Mayo Clinic recommends performing strength training exercises for all major muscle groups at least twice a week. This could either be lifting light to moderate weights for sets of 12-15 reps, or lifting a heavy, challenging weight for sets of 4-8 reps. Both are effective ways to fatigue your muscles and improve your strength. 

When your workouts start to feel easier, you can challenge your body to see improvements by implementing progressive overload, where you gradually increase the weight, volume (e.g. reps), training frequency or intensity. You can also test your one rep max (1RM) occasionally for different movements such as bench press, squat and deadlift to see your strength progress. Sweat programs BUILD and Lifting At Home use both of these techniques, and other programs such as PWR or High Intensity Strength with Kayla will also help increase your strength!

This is about the ability of your muscles to continuously contract for extended periods of time, rather than just a few seconds for a heavy lift. 

Running, cycling, hiking and circuit training are all effective ways to test your muscular endurance, as are isometric movements that you hold for long periods, such as holding a plank or a squat. It’s an important component of fitness because it allows you to continuously move without your body getting tired. 

To improve your muscular endurance, it can help to include circuit training or high rep strength training using low to moderate weights in your routine.

This is such an important part of fitness, but it’s something that often slips down our list of priorities when life gets busy! Flexibility refers to the ease at which your muscles and joints can move through a full range of motion without pain or stiffness. 

When you don’t work on your flexibility, your muscles and joints can become stiff and movements can become limited, uncomfortable or even painful. According to Harvard Health, being flexible can help to prevent injuries and pain while also having a positive effect on your balance and overall athletic performance. 

There are a few things you can do each week to improve your flexibility. As part of your warm-up, you can perform some dynamic stretches to prepare your body for the movements to come in your workout. Static stretches (holding a stretch for 10-30 seconds) should be part of your cool-down or a dedicated recovery session, and if you’re looking for a training style that incorporates flexibility training, you could try Pilates, barre or yoga! 

One quick and simple flexibility test is to sit or stand and lean forward to try and touch your toes. This tests the flexibility in your back, glutes, ankles, and hamstrings. As you practice different stretches, you might notice certain areas need a little more TLC than others. 

Muscles feeling tight? Try some of these:

This final component refers to your body’s ratio of fat mass to fat-free mass, such as muscle and bone. Having some body fat is essential tissue for optimal health (including warmth and hormone health), but having too much, particularly visceral fat which is stored around your stomach and organs, has been linked to a greater risk of diseases and health conditions such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, respiratory and joint problems, and cancer. 

Decreasing your fat mass and increasing your bone and muscle mass can improve your health and reduce your risk of chronic diseases. The great news? Improving your body composition is often a natural result of leading a healthy lifestyle and taking care of the other four components with a mix of cardio, strength and flexibility training. 

Measuring your body composition isn’t something you can do on a standard set of scales or by calculating your BMI (body mass index). You either need to use a special set of scales or undergo a body composition test overseen by a professional. 

Understanding these five components of fitness can help you to structure your workout routine for maximum health benefits or to understand why your Sweat program is structured the way it is (and why the Sweat Trainers strongly encourage you to complete your recovery sessions!). 

If you naturally enjoy some of these components more than others, that’s totally normal, but it doesn’t mean you should neglect the parts you don’t love. It can help to find a way to easily incorporate those things into the parts of your schedule you do enjoy. If you tend to neglect stretching, try getting in the habit of finishing each workout with a quick five-minute stretch, or if strength training isn’t your thing, an Express Workout could be exactly what you need.

Making fitness an enjoyable part of your life that you look forward to is key for your long-term health, so work on these five components to help improve your fitness in a way that works best for YOU.

* Disclaimer: This blog post is not intended to replace the advice of a medical professional. The above information should not be used to diagnose, treat, or prevent any disease or medical condition. Please consult your doctor before making any changes to your diet, sleep methods, daily activity, or fitness routine. Sweat assumes no responsibility for any personal injury or damage sustained by any recommendations, opinions, or advice given in this article.