Fitness and Aerobics Review
Defining Fitness
The ability to perform daily tasks vigorously and alertly with energy left over for enjoying leisure-time activities and meeting emergency demands.
Physical fitness involves the performance of the heart, lungs, and muscles of the body.
As you undertake your fitness program it is important to remember that fitness is an individual quality that varies from person to person. It is influenced by age, gender, heredity, personal habits, exercise, and eating practices.
Four Basic Components of Fitness
Cardio Respiratory Endurance: The ability to delivery oxygen and nutrients to tissues and to remove wastes over sustained periods of time. Distance running and swimming are methods used to measure this component.
Muscular Strength: The ability of a muscle to exert force for a brief period of time. Upper body strength, for example, can be measured by various weight lifting exercises.
Muscular Endurance: The ability of a muscle or group of muscles to sustain repeated contractions or to continue applying force against a fixed object. Pushups are often used to test endurance of arm and shoulder muscles.
Flexibility: The ability to move joints and use muscles through their full range of motion. The sit and reach test is a good measure of flexibility of the lower back and hamstrings.
A Workout Schedule
Your workout schedule should include something from each of the four basic fitness components described above. Each workout should begin with a warm up and end with a cool down. As a general rule space your workouts through out the week and avoid consecutive days of hard exercise.
Guidelines to Exercise
To Improve Cardio Respiratory Reduce Body Fat
1. Frequency Minimum 3 X per week Minimum 4 X per week
Maximum 5 X per week Maximum 6 X per week
2. Intensity Poor starting condition 60% MHR
Average starting condition 70% MHR
Good starting condition 80% MHR
3. Time Minimum 20 minutes per session Minimum 30 minutes per session
Max. 30–40 minutes per session Max. 40–60 minutes per session