Components of Fitness

Most people, when they start an exercise program, know they need to do a little cardio and maybe pick up a few dumbbells here and there.

There's more to it than that. You'll get better results if you know all components of fitness -- and you work within them! You'll be as fit and healthy as you can be, plus you'll be less likely to become injured.

Below are the components:

Muscular Fitness

This includes muscular strength & endurance.

Muscular Strength: the maximum force a muscle can produce against a resistance in a single, maximal effort.

Muscular Endurance: the capacity of a muscle to exert force repeatedly against a resistance, or to hold a static contraction over time.

Both muscular strength and endurance can be work on through resistance training.

Cardiorespiratory Fitness

The ability to perform repetitive, moderate to high intensity, large muscle movements for a prolonged period of time.

'Cardio' training can be worked on through exercises such as walking, running, aerobics class.

Flexibility

The range of motion around a joint.

Flexibility can be worked on simply from stretching major muscles after each exercise session.

Proper Body Composition

Body composition itself is the makeup of the body in terms of the relative percentage of fat free mass and body fat.

Proper body composition is where good nutrition and exercise meet.

The first thing you need to do is ask yourself if you're touching on all of these components, or are you focusing all of your time on just one or two.

Knowing the components is the start point, but remember there are training guidelines for each components, which I'll be talking about in another blog.