Fitness. Why is It So Important?
When you ask most Fitness Professionals, “What is Fitness?” they will usually tell you it involves the ability for individuals to perform physical activity.
In the fitness industry it is typically measured in 5 ways:
- Cardiorespiratory Endurance – the efficiency of the body to efficiently deliver oxygen and nutrients for muscle activities (typically know as aerobic fitness).
- Muscular Strength – the muscles ability to exert the greatest amount of force in a single effort.
- Muscular Endurance – the muscles ability to sustain repeated actions.
- Body Composition – the body’s composition of muscle, fat, water and bone and other materials. Most people are typically interested in their fat percentage.
- Flexibility – the range of motion around a joint.
In order to improve your fitness, it is critical that time is spent on all of these activities and that constant revisions are made to your exercise schedule to ensure that your body is sufficiently challenged and improving.
The key principles Fitness Professionals work on with their clients when trying to improve their client’s fitness are:
Regularity – having people exercising regularly in order for the body to improve.
Progression – having the program become progressively more difficult in order for the person’s fitness to improve
Balance – having a program that addresses all of the above factors. If the training becomes out of balance, the person may become at risk of injuries.
Specificity – the program needs to be aimed at developing the person in areas that they need to improve. For instance, the person may want to improve muscle strength, but walking long distances may not necessarily be the right approach.
Recovery – a good exercise regime will enable recovery periods in order for the body to repair itself.
Fun/ Enjoyable/ Variety – the exercise needs to be rewarding, fun and have sufficient variety in it to keep it interesting (walking around the same block every day may not excite a lot of people)!
WHY IMPROVE YOUR PHYSICAL FITNESS?
It is well known that increasing your physical fitness can have some of the following effects:
- Reducing blood pressure
- Reducing the chance of developing some chronic illnesses such as diabetes
- Breathe easier
- Develop stronger bones
- Boosts energy levels
- Helps reduce “bad” cholesterol levels
- Helps you manage your weight
- Helps you keep healthy joints
- Enhances performance in daily physical activities
- It can greatly enhance your mood and your ability to perform some mental functions
THE MENTAL EFFECTS OF EXERCISE
A key outcome of exercise is increased mood. The reasons why think.act.feel is so committed to assisting their clients to develop an exercise routine are:
- Exercise helps decrease the stress hormone (cortisol) and increases the release of endorphins (the happy hormone). Cortisol is particularly a negative hormone when it comes to health and fitness as it interrupts the body’s ability to break down fats. Endorphins, on the other hand, make you feel better because they can help mask pain and alleviate depression levels.
- Some research has suggested that regular exercises can slow down their levels of cognitive decline.
- For people who are depressed, regular exercise has a beneficial effect on their overall mood.
- For people who are depressed, engage in regular exercise and psychotherapy, seems to have the best antidepressant effect.
- It appears from early research that regular exercise can improve some specific areas of cognitive performance, these being activities that require planning, working memory, multitasking and resistance to distraction.