Fitness is a general state of health and well-being and, more specifically, the ability to perform aspects of sports or occupations. Fitness is generally achieved through correct nutrition, moderate-vigorous physical activity, exercise and rest
How fit is fit enough and the necessity of being fit
There’s a lot of misconceptions in the fitness industry.
We all have a friend who is a coach potato who doesn’t get any exercise, drinks a six pack a day, eats junk, etc. That’s not okay. But it doesn’t make him unfit.
Let’s use a example of a CEO of a big company. He smokes, never exercises and has chronically high stress as a result of his job. Sounds pretty unfit right? Well yes & no… You can’t really say. So let’s go a little further, he is also really good at his job and guides the company effectively with no issues in spite of his high stress level and lousy life style.
I would say that he is fit. You see, fitness is the ability to do a task. Our CEO is fit for the task of running his company. Maybe more fit than another CEO who exercises everyday, doesn’t smoke or drink, and eats healthy.
Fitness is relative. Nobody is more fit to run 100 meters than Usain Bolt. Nobody is more fit to swim 100 meter butterfly than Michael Phelps. The better your body is at carrying out your chosen task the more fit you are. If a major league pitcher can run a sub 3:00:00 marathon is he more fit than another pitcher who can’t finish the marathon? You see my point, MLB pitchers’ salaries are not dependent on how fast they can run 42km so who cares?
When it comes to fitness you need to manage compromises. You cannot be good at everything nor do you need to be good at everything. I believe that’s what many fitness professionals do not understand. If you’re training a power lifting and making them run 800 meter repeats you might be wasting their time… I spoke last week about wasted training capacity. This goes back to that concept. To achieve your fitness goals you need to decide what it is that you want to be fit for and train for that.
An important note here is that I am not saying it’s okay to drink and smoke and eat garbage if you are in a job where it won’t affect your performance. I think everyone should be healthy. Healthy means you eat well, you’re not diseased or ill, you aren’t injured, not overweight, et cetera; every part of your body is functioning the way it should. All that said, the coach potato I mentioned in the beginning is probably fairly fit to watch television all day. It goes without saying that he should probably work on this health. Maybe taking about a recreational sport that he can strive to be fit for would also help him become healthier?
My reason for going through this concept is this: most trainers try to do too much. Look at crossfit, in the crossfit games they crown the “Fittest Man on Earth”. Rich Froning certainly is the most fit to do crossfit. But I don’t think he is fit to compete in weightlifting or sprinting in the olympics. And that’s okay. If you aren’t training for crossfit you don’t need to be good at all the same things that Rich Froning is good at. Don’t do too much. More isn’t better, it’s just more.
If you want to be good at something, practise to be good at it. You also need to manage compromises. Most athletes don’t need to be super great at standing on a balance board or bosu ball to succeed at their sport so it might be time to eliminate that from your program. The more specific your training the more specific the results; cut our everything that doesn’t need to be there.
If your goal is optimum physical competence then all the general physical skills must be
considered:
2. Stamina - The ability of body systems to process, deliver, store, and utilize energy.
3. Strength - The ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply force.
4. Flexibility - the ability to maximize the range of motion at a given joint.
5. Power - The ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply maximum force in minimum time.
6. Speed - The ability to minimize the time cycle of a repeated movement.
7. Coordination - The ability to combine several distinct movement patterns into a singular distinct movement.
8. Agility - The ability to minimize transition time from one movement pattern to another.
9. Balance - The ability to control the placement of the bodies center of gravity in relation to its support base.
10. Accuracy - The ability to control movement in a given direction or at a given intensity.
Awareness of Fitness
Physical activity is an essential part of a being health. Adults get at least 2½ hours of moderately to vigorously intense physical activity each week. You can spread this activity out over easy 30-minute increments, five days a week. Or you can choose from many activities and can accumulate activities in bouts of 10 minutes. Doing muscle-strengthening exercises two or more days a week. The health benefits of regular physical activity can be remarkable. Regular physical activity can:
- Help you maintain a healthy weight
- Lower your cholesterol
- Lower your blood pressure
- Strengthen muscles and bones
- Reduce your risk for heart disease, diabetes, some cancers, and obesity
Regular physical activity can also help your mental health. Often, when you're low, regular physical activity can pick you up; or, if you're anxious, physical activity can calm you down as you recover from your fitness return.
There are even intangible benefits of participating in fitness activities, including:
- Providing an opportunity to connect with others
- Lifting your spirits
- Giving you a new outlook on a problem or project
Fitness - When Combined With Spirituality (YOGASANA)
Exactly how does yoga build fitness? The answer you get depends on whom you ask.
“My own belief is that the small but significant increase in maximal oxygen capacity was due to an increase in muscle endurance, which allowed the subjects to exercise longer, extract more oxygen, and reach an increased maximal oxygen uptake,”
Then there’s the pranayama theory. I know that yoga poses help increase lung capacity by improving the flexibility of the rib area, shoulders, and back, allowing the lungs to expand more fully. Breathwork further boosts lung capacity—and possibly also VO2max—by conditioning the diaphragm and helping to more fully oxygenate the blood.
Suryanamaskar (Sun Salutations) and other continuously linked poses increase the heart rate, making yoga aerobically challenging. And many yoga poses—particularly standing poses, balancing poses, and inversions—build quite a bit of strength because they require sustained isometric contractions of many large and small muscles. Of course, holding the poses longer increases this training effect.
Finally, yoga tunes you into your body and helps you to better coordinate your actions. “When you bring your breath, your awareness, and your physical body into harmony, you allow your body to work at its maximum fitness capacity,Yoga class is merely a laboratory for how to be in harmony with the body in every activity outside of yoga. This improved physical wellness and fluidity enhance not just the physical well-being but also permeate all levels of our being.”
Dieting
Successfully fit people are successful not because of good luck, birth order, or family heritage but because they have adopted the right Diet. They do things differently than the rest.
To be a successful FIT person, you must adopt the habits of Dieting.
1. Tend to Stick to the Same "Daily Menu"
The majority of fit people say they eat virtually the same meals every day, mostly the same breakfast, same lunch, same dinner, and when it comes to snacks and beverages . . . well, you guessed it, very predictable food. To clarify, they did not suggest that they eat exactly the same entree for every meal, but they often chose from three, maybe four things that they like for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
2. Eat Breakfast
Experts agree that the majority of people who struggle with overeating are those who undereat during the first part of the day, specifically those who skip breakfast. So it seems that breakfast really is the most important meal of the day!
Why does eating breakfast help people lose and ultimately maintain a healthier weight? One theory suggests that eating a healthy breakfast reduces hunger throughout the rest of the day, therefore decreasing the likelihood of overeating and making poor food choices at lunch.
3. Drink Water
Not soda. Not iced tea. Just plain old water. This is the biggie. Drinking enough water is a vital part of any conditioning program because it keeps your body functioning in homeostasis and aids every aspect of bodily function. Highly successful fit people drink at least six to eight 12-ounce glasses of water a day, plus more as needed during exercise. Note: It's possible to drink too much water, which dilutes the body's electrolytes (potassium, sodium, chloride, magnesium). Don't drink more than a gallon a day unless you're also replenishing your electrolytes.
4. Eat Small—And Often
4. Eat Small—And Often
Eating small meals more often reduces cortisol levels, research suggests. In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, people who ate six small meals a day for 2 weeks, as opposed to three large meals containing the same total number of calories, reduced their cortisol levels by more than 17 percent! They lost belly fat, too.
When you eat small, frequent meals long term, the body becomes efficient at keeping cortisol levels low, which helps both men and women reduce belly fat.
5. Eat Whole Foods First
Successful fit people tend to eat mainly whole, unprocessed foods, including fruits, veggies, and whole grains (and products made from whole grains). Certainly they enjoy the occasional treat, but 80 percent of the time or more, their preference leads to whole foods.
6. Know Their Foods
This skill is easier to acquire than it sounds. A couple of weeks of label reading is all it takes. There are even apps for your phone and Web sites that provide this information quickly and for free.
7. Eat Their Favorite Foods—Carefully
Successfully fit people know that it's okay to indulge every once in a while. They savor those moments instead of sucking down the food as if they’re afraid it's the only time they'll ever see it again.
8. Don't Keep Red Zone Food in the House
8. Don't Keep Red Zone Food in the House
If you look in a successfully fit person's fridge, pantry, or cupboards, you won't typically find cookies, crackers, chips, chocolate, full-fat ice cream, or soda. Why? Because they don't crave these things. They also know you can't eat ’em if you don’t have 'em. Smart, right?
9. Close the Kitchen after Dinner
Successfully fit people eat their final meal at a reasonable hour, as opposed to eating dinner followed by a lavish 10:00 p.m. snack and another dessert. Most often they go to sleep, not hungry, but on an empty stomach. This allows them to wake up feeling thin, rested, and hungry for breakfast. It may take a little effort, but going to bed earlier and going to sleep without food awaiting digestion in your stomach keeps your body’s metabolism in a fat-burning state. Instead of digesting, which causes restless sleep, your body can focus on other things—like repairing cells!
10. Resourceful and Politely Picky at Restaurants
Successfully fit people find healthful alternatives to selections on any menu, from a five-star restaurant's to Wendy's. They know that it's the food choices, not necessarily the restaurant choices, that help them to stay slim and healthy.
Mental Fitness
Mental fitness is just as important as physical health and shouldn’t be neglected. Incorporating mental dexterity exercises into your life can help you reap the benefits of a sharper mind and a healthier body for years to come.
Mental fitness is exactly what it sounds like: keeping your brain and emotional health in tip-top shape. It doesn’t mean training for “brain Olympics” or acing an IQ test. Rather, it refers to a series of exercises that help you slow down, decompress, and boost a flagging memory.
Benefits of Mental Fitness
When you finally get to bed after a long day on the go, your body begins to relax, but the mind doesn’t always follow.
Achieve a sense of calm through imagery, the process of picturing a calming scene or location. This reduces tension in both your body and your mind by challenging neurons in the less-dominant area of your brain.
The less-dominant side of your brain is the area that controls feelings of self-confidence and optimism. Increasing activity in your brain’s neural structures by forcing yourself to think about something other than your daily worries through visualization, for example, boosts emotional well-being in addition to calming you down mentally.
Do's and Dont's
Stop Multitasking
You may think that multitasking enables you to get many things done at once, but it actually creates more problems than it solves. Focusing on one task at a time will not only improve your concentration, but it will help you to see the bigger picture, and get you pointed toward in a productive direction.
Be Positive with Yourself
Positive affirmation is one avenue to increased mental proficiency.
Affirmation—or the way you talk to yourself—involves strengthening neural pathways to bring your self-confidence, wellbeing, and satisfaction to a higher level.
To start, make a list of your good qualities and remind yourself that you don’t have to be perfect. Set goals for what you want to improve, and start small to avoid becoming overwhelmed.
Try Something Different
New experiences can also set you on the path to mental fitness.
Trying new foods, different ways of accomplishing routine tasks, and traveling to new places improves your memory and expands your horizons. Even taking a new way to work improves your brain.
According to the Franklin Institute, mental dexterity exercises help you see the world in a new way and strengthen your neural pathways. In essence, breaking out of your routine can help keep your brain young and healthy.
Play Games
Crossword puzzles, Sudoku, and other games that test reasoning and other portions of your brain are fun ways to keep your mind sharp. Any kind of game that employs the use of logic, reasoning, or trivia are great ways to build up your brain muscle.
Take the Time
Mental fitness does not have to take up a lot of your time. Just spending a few minutes every day visualizing, affirming, or relaxing can help you feel better and think more clearly. Schedule a mental fitness break into your calendar right next to your workout schedule. Your mind and your health are worth it.
