The Concept of Fitness

Prepared By: Ms. Rosalia C. Rosario

•Fitness is the ability of the individual to live a healthy, satisfying, useful, and more productive life.

• A person who is physically fit possesses strength, power and endurance. He works efficiently with a minimum waste of energy.

•Physical fitness is generally achieved through exercise, correct nutrition and enough rest.

• Physical fitness is considered a measure of the body’s ability to function efficiently and effectively in work and leisure activities, to be healthy, to resist hypokinetic diseases, and to meet emergency situations.

• Hypokinetic diseases are conditions that occur from a sedentary lifestyle. Examples could include obesity and complications arising from sedentary behavior.

• Sedentary lifestyle is a medical term used to denote a type of lifestyle with no or irregular physical activity. Sedentary activities include sitting, reading, watching television and computer use for much of the day with little or no vigorous physical exercise.

Parameters of Physical Fitness

A. Skill-related parameters- such as agility, balance, coordination, power, reaction time and speed

B. Health-related parameters- such as cardiovascular fitness, flexibility, muscular endurance, strength, and body leanness.

•Components of Physical Fitness

Agility

• Refers to the ability of the person to change position or directions easily and quickly, while under control.

Balance

• Refers to the ability to maintain body stability while moving or standing.

Coordination• Refers to the teaming

together of muscles and nerves in order to accomplish an accurate and well-timed body movement.

Power

• Refers to the ability to perform strong movements quickly.

Reaction Time

• Refers to the amount of time it takes to move once a person decides to start moving.

Speed

• Refers to the ability of the individual to perform a particular movement while covering a distance at the shortest possible time.

Cardiovascular Fitness

• Refers to the efficiency by which oxygen is taken into the lungs and into the bloodstream and carried to the various parts of the body where it is needed.

Flexibility

• Refers to the ability to move the body or bend any part without breaking any joint.

Muscular Endurance

• Refers to the ability to use the skeletal muscles many times in succession without getting tired.

Strength

• Refers to the ability of the muscles to sustain an amount of force while doing heavy or long activity.

Body Leanness

• Refers to the amount of muscle and bone tissues your body possesses. Ideally, your lean tissues (muscles and bones) should be about 75 to 80% of your body weight and fat, 20 to 25%.

Rarely Often

Do you participate in fun games?

Do you participate in ballroom dancing?

Do you do biking?

Do you participate in hiking or mountain climbing?

Do you do brisk walking?

Do you jog?

Do you engage in hip hop dancing?

Do you engage in aerobics?

Do you exercise just for fun?

Do you participate in sports?

Do you participate in sports that you can enjoy as you age?

References:

• PEHM I by Lopez, Beldia and Pangan

• Google.com