Exercise Fitness Basics

Posted by Paul on February 3rd, 2010 at 03:07pm

We all know that exercise and fitness is vital for good health, but how much do you know about the basics?
The more you know the better you can become at using exercise and fitness to improve your health, resistance to disease and even lengthen your life expectancy.

There are several parts to physical fitness. These include:

- Cardiovascular fitness
- Muscular strength
- Muscular endurance
- Flexibility

These 4 fitness basics should all be concentrated on as part of your overall health plan. Let’s look at them in some more detail.

Cardiovascular Fitness
This sort of fitness is all about the ability for your body to deliver oxygen to your muscles, plus the quality of your heart and lung functions.

Muscular Strength
Muscle strength is about how much force your muscle can exert in short bursts. This is achieved through weight lifting.

Muscular Endurance
How well your muscles and entire body can sustain continual force is a measure of muscular endurance.

Flexibility
Moving your joints and muscles through their full motion range measures your flexibility. One of the most common flexibility tests is the simple ‘touch your toes’ examination.

Fat vs. Muscle
Refining your muscle to fat ratio is the goal of a fitness plan. Lean muscle mass is built through continual exercise and strength training and whilst you require some fat mass it should not be overwhelming factor. Certain types of exercise will assist you to decrease body fat, whilst others will help you to build muscle mass.

Warming Up
Your workout schedule should always consist of warm up exercises for at least 5 minutes. There are various ways to warm up including walking, slow jogging, stretching, arm rotations and other low intensity movements that stimulate muscle use without straining.

You should aim to do exercises from each of the 4 groups above on a weekly basis. Flexibility can be achieved through yoga exercises or even during warm ups. Muscular endurance can consist of sit-ups and pull-ups. Muscle strength exercises concern weight lifting and your cardiovascular fitness will be made up of running, aerobics and other continuous exercises.

These exercise fitness work out basics apply to every single person, whether you are someone wanting to lose weight or a person who plays professional sports.

Tags: exercise fitness, fitness, Health, Muscle, Physical exercise, Physical fitness, Warming up, Weight training, Weightlifting

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