When you think of fitness, what’s the very first thing that involves mind? Running under a 10 minute per mile pace? Contrary to popular belief, there are 5 basic components to fitness that help to blur the series between what you think of when you think of fitness and the actual professional Exercise Scientists think of when they think of fitness. Simply put, in order to get the most out of your energetic body, you will need to possess at least a basic degree of cardio-respiratory endurance, muscular strength, muscular versatility, and endurance and have a healthy body composition.

What does that mean? Cardio-respiratory stamina is yet another way of saying aerobic fitness. This pertains to the body’s capacity to absorb, transport, and use oxygen during work or exercise. Aerobic means “with oxygen”. As the body is trained to withstand a higher cardiovascular workload- meaning the center and lungs have to work harder- those organs become stronger and, in turn, increase a person’s aerobic stamina. A marathon runner would be an excellent example of somebody who possess a higher level of cardio-respiratory endurance. Another great example will be a cyclist, such as those who ride in the Tour de France.

Although many of us will never reach the level of a specialist runner or cyclist, we will definitely benefit from exercising both our lungs and heart by doing cardiovascular work. Any exercise that increases our heart rate can be viewed as a form of “cardio”. Most doctors will recommend that in order to get the most benefit from cardio, you’ll need to exercise moderately to vigorously most times of the week for a minimum of 20-30 minutes every time.

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Muscular strength and endurance tend to be regarded as the same exact thing. While I’ll discuss them collectively here, they are two very different components to fitness. Muscular strength is the body’s ability to create force at a given speed of movement. Muscular endurance identifies the body’s capability to repeat actions and resist muscular fatigue.

Or in layman’s conditions, muscular strength is your ability to lift something very heavy but only 1 time versus your muscular endurance as your ability to lift a weight frequently and without tiring. The first is not better than the other. You need strength to perform jobs such as raising a package or moving a couch nevertheless, you need endurance to lift multiple boxes or to move that sofa again and again and over again. In my opinion, you need both endurance and strength to have not only a well-balanced body but also fit one. Whenever we move to the component of flexibility- the often ignored and overlooked component- we start to lose people.

Flexibility alone is not flashy and doesn’t earn gold medals. But without it, your body would breakdown. It could lose strength and endurance. It could lose the capability to run or cycle without pain or effort. Fitness would be impossible to realize and more importantly, you’ll lose your present standard of living.

So what’s flexibility? Versatility is the number of motion around a joint or a combined group of bones. Flexibility refers to the free movement of a joint and could potentially be limited by the amount of soft tissue, such as muscle, surrounding it. A good example of someone with a high level of flexibility would be a gymnast.

Notice however that the gymnast has a mixture of cardio-respiratory endurance, muscular power and endurance as well as a higher level of flexibility. All the different parts of fitness work together in order to permit the gymnast to succeed at his or her craft. The final component to fitness is that of body composition. There are two parts to body composition- that of excess fat mass that of lean muscle mass.