Most people (except for Fitness Professionals) may not know what is the term or definition of 'Fitness Component'... or will feel that this is too much 'theory' to know or absorb... However, a good understanding of the types of Fitness Components will help you to appreciate and plan your lifestyle to be more healthy and fit. Before we even go to the definition, let's understand the most common word; Fitness... We all heard about Fitness this and that... Fitness Instructors... Cardio-respiratory fitness... Just exactly what is fitness?? Lemme enlighten you with the below:
Fitness - the ability to meet daily requirements without undue fatigue (with surplus left for leisure pursuits and emergencies)
Perhaps, an easier definition is to have the ability to live our normal life without getting constantly tired, and with enough energy for leisure and play, as well as to handle any sudden emergencies.
And with this, different types of fitness components started to come out; some of you might have heard of things like Cardio-Respiratory Fitness, muscular strength/endurance, Sports performance, Agility, Flexibility, Balance...etc
Yes, to help you understand even better, let's just imagine the ingredients for a cake - eggs, flour, milk, flavouring, sugar, yeast, water, cream etc. And therefore, you can visualize Fitness components just like this... A cake baked with the right amount of ingredients will definitely taste good; similarly our fitness will improve thus making us feel good and live a good quality of life if we take care of our bodies with the right amount of 'ingredients'...
There are many types of such 'ingredients' that will improve our fitness; and these are some of the ingredients: Cardio-respiratory Fitness, Muscular Strength, Muscular Endurance, Flexibility, Body composition, Agility, Maximum Power, Speed, Coordination, Balance....
For today's article, I will talk about the following 'ingredients' which I believe are the main ones affecting fitness; Cardio-Respiratory Fitness, Muscular Strength/Muscular Endurance (I've decided to lump these two together), Flexibility... Don't be mistaken about the rest like body composition, muscular power balance... they are also important... but typing so many things is really not easy.. so lemme just concentrate the mentioned 3 fitness components ('ingredients')... Btw, I will also be talking about Body Composition soon... so stay tune...
Cardio-Respiratory Fitness
This is perhaps considered the main fitness component, since it has got to do with one of the most important organ in our body - Heart. Do note; cardio, cardiac etc.... as long as you see these words, you know its got something related to the heart. In simple definition, it refers to the ability of our heart to pump deliver oxygen throughout our bodies to produce and sustain energy. We need to have proper heart function and ability to deliver oxygen to our bodies so that we can continue moving. Walking, running, swimming, aerobics, cycling are common exercises that helps to improve cardio-respiratory fitness. Do note also these 'cardio' exercises not just help to improve your heart ability to pump oxygen throughout the body for energy production, it also helps your body to consume calories; which is why this explains most people when talking about burning calories will automatically link to cardio related exercises.
Muscular Strength/Endurance
Lemme temporarily breakdown out for muscular strength and endurance; Muscular strength refers to the ability of your muscle to exert maximum force to overcome resistance; muscular endurance refers to the muscle's ability to exert this force repeatedly. In our everyday life, we are always exerting muscular strength and muscular endurance. For eg. when someone's car breakdown, and you are the Good Samaritan helping to push the car, you are exerting strength from your body's major muscles (Eg. Muscles from the legs, shoulder and arms) to help push the car; this is an example of Muscular strength. For Muscular endurance example, imagine yourself being a carpenter using a saw to saw off a piece of wood; that repeated work of sawing have to utilise the muscular endurance of your arm and back muscles to repeatedly saw the wood.
Improvement to muscular strength and endurance can be done by doing resistance exercises. This is very common in the gym where we see exercisers performing bench press, squats, lats pull down, and also body weight exercises like push ups, pull ups etc. You may also wish to note that proper resistance training can bring lots of benefits ; Eg. improve your posture, improve metabolism (thru the gain of lean muscle mass), preventing injuries etc
Flexibility
Flexibility refers to our body being able to move the joint thru a range of motion, without causing any discomfort. To help you understand flexibility, think of an example that you need to reach a top shelve to get something. You lift up your arm to reach the top shelf, halfway you realized the item you wanna get is located more towards the extreme corner of the shelf, and thus you have to lift your arm higher up towards the corner to get the item. In this case, you need to bend your trunk slightly towards the corner, and therefore stretching the side of the trunk. That stretching of the trunk automatically will cause the trunk to lengthen the muscle. Therefore, flexibility will involve the effect of lengthening the muscles.
The importance of flexibility comes to more attention as we grow older; as we age, our body lose the flexibility ability. This is even more important as muscles are connected to the joints, and if muscles lose the flexibility function, the tight muscles pulls on to the joints and we get pain when the joints are not in the proper normal alignment. This is why many cases of low back pain are actually related to the worsening of flexibility in major muscles (eg. the back, hamstrings and hip flexors of the legs and hips).
Flexibility can be improved by performing stretching exercises.
Guidelines for Fitness Components
Having understand cardio-respiratory fitness, muscular strength/endurance and flexibility, it is important to note that we strive for a balance among them. Very often I have come across the following situations:
1 - Women tend to spend more time performing cardio related exercises, because of the need to burn more calories to achieve a slimmer body, yet do not take any effort to perform resistance exercises to improve muscular strength and endurance. This is the due to the common misconception that they will build up bulky muscles that look like bodybuilders. If you are one of these women, do note that your body do not possess sufficient hormones to achieve that bodybuilder bulk muscles (although it is still possible, especially if you plan your exercise training emphasis more towards hypertrophy). In fact, resistance training will hep you in your pursuit of a slim lean body when you started to achieve a fair amount of lean muscle mass to improve your metabolism.
2 - Men tend to spend more time in the gym to do resistance training in an effort to bulk up or shape the muscles. However most of them will rather not spend extra time to do stretching, and some even purposely skip cardio exercises). Firstly, when you spend too much time performing resistance training, your muscles tend to get shorten, and if you do not do something to lengthen the muscles, the tight shortened muscles will pull on to the joints; then one day you notice pain in your knees (probably due to tight quads, IT band), lower back (probably due to tightness in the back, hamstrings, hip flexors), shoulders (probably due to tightness in shoulders and chest) etc.
3 - Men or women who do not even spend time doing any exercises (frankly, nothing much I can comment about this situation; either you make time to exercise or not).
Therefore for anyone of you who happen to fall into the above mentioned situations of 1 and 2, I hope you can understand this importance: Balance. Spending time and making effort to achieve a balance of cardio-respiratory fitness, muscular strength/endurance, and flexibility will help you to achieve a 'whole-rounded' fitness. Just like the cake that I have mentioned; with the right amount of ingredients, you can bake a nice good cake; so is the right amount of effort for cardio-respiratory fitness, muscular strength/endurance and flexibility.
With this, you may wish to see below for the guidelines in each of the fitness components:
Cardio-Respiratory Fitness:
Frequency: 3 - 5 times a week of 20 - 60 mins
Intensity: 60% to 90% of Maximum heart rate (or use the talk test here as a guideline: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF_nQ90Mn9g)
Muscular Strength
Frequency: at least 2 times per week with 1 day rest in between, 20 mins to 60mins, with exercises targeting the major muscle groups (take note that you can also target different muscle groups daily; Eg. Chest and shoulders on Mon, Back and legs on Tue)
Intensity: moderate to heavy weight (sufficient to fatigue within 8 - 12 reps per set)
Muscular Endurance
Frequency: at least 2 times per week, 20 to 60 minutes
Intensity: Light - moderate weight (sufficient to fatigue within 12 - 15 reps)
Flexibility
Frequency: can be done daily
Intensity: Stretch gently to point of discomfort
(As you can see, this is something you can do everyday, so do strive to stretch everyday... Do refer to some of my previous post on stretching...)
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