If I ask you what does it mean to be physically fit, what would be the first explanation you’ll give me as the answer? I know many of you would say that it means maintaining certain body weights, muscle structures, and strengths. Howbeit, this is just a misconception about physical fitness.
In general, some people still consider the lower body weight with zero figures and immersive power as being physically fit. And indeed, these are some great criteria to achieve. But this is not exactly what one needs to meet the proper level of fitness.
What Does It Mean To Be Physically Fit
The proper fitness level doesn’t only rely on weight and daily activity. There are more things to consider in physical fitness. It happens to have more concerning areas that make your body fit enough to discord chronic microorganisms from time to time.
To be precise, a general condition of health and well-being entails carrying out daily tasks and leisure activities and effectively resisting disease.
So, it’s erroneous to presume, under that definition, that you are a fit person because of your weight or the perfect muscles. The ability to meet your everyday life requirements is more important for this.
Thus, five essential areas are equally vital to achieving physical fitness based on the description of the Department of Health and Human Service.
Body Composition
Body composition usually indicates your overall weight that consists of your muscle, bone, and fat. No, we are not talking about the BMI(Body Mass Index) scales here. That’s because, at times, BMI results can also be deceiving. Why?
Well, there are people around us who look healthy enough yet have the perfect body fat percentage than we actually assume. Then again, some people have the exact body weight, but that’s almost full of the fat percentage.
So, you can understand that body composition depends on the overall weight measurement of bone, muscles, fat. If you gain more body fat than required, it might harm your body functions and increase the risk of chronic diseases.
Experts suggest that women should maintain body fat from 8% to 35%, whereas men need to maintain that from 5% to 29%.
Cardiorespiratory Endurance
Cardiorespiratory endurance is another essential factor in body fitness. This term involves endurance activities like running, skipping, climbing stairs, or cycling.
You can also consider this as a part of your regular exercise. Then it will be easier for you to practice and improvise your ability in such activities without getting exhausted quickly.
For further assistance, you can connect to a cardio fitness trainer. Thus, he/she will determine your heart rate, stamina, and respiration rate to ensure the proper fitness analysis of your body.
Muscular Endurance
Muscular endurance is the term that determines the time duration of your muscle fatigue. It’s generally measured depending on the muscle strength training at a fitness gym.
A means of measuring muscle stamina is to see how many sets can be filled with a certain weight in a gym or how many pull-ups or push-ups are possible in one place.
Although muscle endurance is convenient for daily duties such as carrying food, cleaning a lawn or holding a child.
Muscular Strength
The force that your muscle exerts during physical activity is muscular strength. Unfortunately, as we live a modern lifestyle, our physical activity tends to be less effective in strength balancing.
For instance, you could bench a large weight with relatively weak glutes or slippers from sitting at the desk all day long. And that’s what when we face strength imbalances.
Flexibility
By flexibility, we mean measuring the range of movement of your body’s each joint. So, you can’t achieve the proper fitness level by practicing cardiovascular endurance but not having body flexibility.
Although, it isn’t true that only a yogi or gymnast can have such a flexibility level. You can also maintain your flexibility by performing range of motion exercises or muscle stretching.
Considerations
So far, we have discussed the five essential factors that you should maintain to obtain a better physical fitness level. Howbeit, you can also bring these simple lifestyle changes to attain the fitness target.
- Try to maintain a low-carb or lean protein diet.
- Perform any physical exercise for at least 30 minutes daily.
- Avoid refined grains and added sugars.
- Increase the consumption of saturated fat as that helps to keep the cholesterol and blood pressure readings within the ideal range.
As of now, you are aware of the physical health assessment for maintaining body fitness. You should acknowledge them and work on improvising your shortcomings to give you a more active lifestyle.
Frequently Asked Question
Here you will get the answers to the most common questions regarding what does it mean to be physically fit.
How to calculate body composition?
You can use several tools available for calculating body composition. Besides, you can consult a doctor and let him measure it for you.
What are the physical health benefits of cardiorespiratory fitness?
Cardiorespiratory fitness can contribute to reducing the risk of diseases,
- Coronary Heart Disease
- Type 2 Diabetes
- Strokes
- Cancer Risk
How does lung health change with exercise?
In general, physical exercises strengthen heart health and improvises the respiratory system. Therefore, the lungs get to increase the endurance level and improvise overall health.
How can exercise change the health of the heart?
The efficiency of the heart changes and improves during constant training. However, a recent study reveals that different types of activity have subtle differences in how they affect the heart.
Although all forms of exercise increase heart size, there are major distinctions between endurance athletes and strength athletes.
How can I become physically fit?
Choose an activity that you enjoy. It could be going to the gym, playing football, swimming, cycling, or any other physical activity that motivates you to do it every day.
Find a venue where you may begin your activity or learn how to perform it better.
Cut all the meats and fried foods processed in your diet.
Do not forget to break your food into 5 or more tiny servings. A smaller dish than normal would be the greatest idea.
