The Five Elements of Fitness

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) associates regular physical activity with a decreased risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, some cancers, improved bone health, enhanced mental health, and improved quality of life with age2. Discover the five elements of fitness and some examples.

Cardiovascular endurance, also known as cardiorespiratory endurance or aerobic fitness, is the capacity of your heart, lungs, arteries, vessels, and veins to efficiently and effectively take in oxygen and deliver it to your body's tissues. By performing routine exercise that strains your heart and lungs, you can:

• Maintain or improve the efficient delivery and uptake of oxygen to your body's systems

• Enhance cellular metabolism

• Ease the physical challenges of everyday life

Starting a training regimen that improves cardiovascular fitness is crucial because heart disease causes over 630,000 deaths each year in the US.

Exercises that are good for the heart include walking, cycling, swimming, dancing, circuit training, and boxing.

According to the physical activity recommendations of the ACSM, each week should include at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise or 75 minutes of strenuous exercise.

Consistency is crucial, of course. Although 150 minutes may seem like a lot, it only requires 20 to 30 minutes of exercise per day, five to seven days per week.

Muscular Endurance

One of the two elements that affect the overall health of the muscles is muscular endurance (muscular strength is the other). Consider a muscle group's capacity to continually contract against a specific resistance as its muscular endurance.

A good example is long-distance riding. Bicyclists must have fatigue-resistant muscles in their legs and glutes in order to pedal their bikes over long distances, frequently up steep inclines. These show very high muscle endurance levels.

Another instance of isometric training to increase muscular endurance is holding a plank to strengthen the core. You have more endurance through your hips, abs, and shoulders the longer you can maintain a stable posture while contracting your abdominals.

Muscular Strength

Muscular strength is the amount of force a given muscle group can generate with a single, all-out effort, whereas muscular endurance relates to how fatigue-resistant a particular muscle group is. It is your one-rep maximum in terms of strength training.

Muscular strength is specific to a certain muscle area, like muscular endurance. In other words, you can have robust pectoral muscles but relatively weak hamstrings, or strong glutes but relatively weak deltoids. This is why it's crucial to have a well-rounded strength training regimen that concentrates on all of your key muscle groups.

Consider Your Goals

Your fitness and health goals will again decide how much you train for strength. If your goal is to improve your health, for example, you should be able to carry a large box and get out of a chair with ease.8 In this case, increased physical strength may be a result of an exercise program designed to increase your muscular endurance.

However, you should concentrate more of your training schedule on lifting large weights if you want to gain muscle mass or be able to lift heavier weights at the gym.

Use heavier weights with fewer repetitions and push your muscles to exhaustion with each session to increase muscle strength.

Use smaller weights and more repetitions to develop your muscles' endurance over time.

Both muscular strength and endurance can be enhanced at the same time. This can be done in addition to cardiovascular exercise. Your exercise program can be more effective by using circuit-training activities, which integrate cardio and strength training into a single training session.

Flexibility

Similar to physical strength and endurance, flexibility is joint-specific and is defined as the range of motion around a given joint without pain. For instance, you can have loose and flexible hips and hamstrings yet incredibly flexible shoulders.

At any age, flexibility is vital. It contributes to fluid movement and may have an impact on your balance, coordination, and agility. Keeping your primary joints in their full range of motion will lessen your risk of injury and improve your sports performance.

The significance of flexibility is even more clear as you age. Consider the elderly: Many of them might shuffle or have trouble reaching their arms above their heads.

This could have an impact on a person's quality of life by making it harder for them to complete daily tasks like reaching objects on high shelves, picking up items from the floor, or just regaining their balance if they start to fall.

While it is impossible to totally stop the aging process, preserving your joints and keeping your mobility can keep you active long into your senior years.

Body Composition

The last element of health-related physical fitness is body composition, which is your body's fat mass to fat-free mass ratio. Achieving and maintaining a healthy body composition is a goal of almost all regular exercise regimens since high amounts of fat mass are linked to harmful health outcomes, such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

Measuring Body Composition

You must be aware of your starting point if you want to witness changes in your body composition. Weighing oneself won't help, as weight doesn't reveal your internal tissue composition13. Some ways of determining body composition are more practical than others.

• Hydrostatic underwater weighing entails first being weighed on land and then on a scale underwater. These testing facilities can be found in some fitness establishments and research institutes.

• Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry, or DEXA, scans are frequently used to assess bone mineral density but are also capable of providing precise assessments of body composition. DEXA scans are often conducted in radiology facilities and may or may not be insured.

• Bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA): This form of testing is available at some gyms, or you can buy a scale that employs the technique to determine your body fat % at home.

• Calculators for body fat percentage are available and simple to use, although they are not as precise as DEXA scans or hydrostatic testing. Use these results to track changes and make sure you're experiencing improvements over time. The results normally come within three to four percentage points of your real body fat percentage.