Physical Fitness Essay

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What is Physical Fitness?

Physical fitness is considered a measure of the body’s ability to function efficiently in work and leisure activities, to be healthy, to resist hypo-kinetic disease (sedentary lifestyle), and to meet emergency situations.

Some of the, hypo-kinetic disease (sedentary lifestyle): • Cardiovascular disease • Some forms of cancer • Back problems, Hypo-kinetic conditions are the cause of 40% of back problems in the United States alone. • Obesity • Type 2 diabetes • Osteoporosis • Mental health

Two types of physical fitness are most often recognized: Health related fitness and Skill related fitness. The difference between physical fitness related to functional health and physical performance related to athletic ability makes it easier to develop proper fitness objectives and goals.

Health – Related Physical Fitness includes those activities of physiological function that offer protection from disease related to a sedentary lifestyle. It can be improved and/or maintained through regular physical activities. Specific components include: cardiovascular fitness, body composition (ratio of leanness to fatness), strength and muscular endurance, and flexibility.

Cardiovascular Fitness
Aerobic fitness is important for a healthy lifestyle and may be the most important element of fitness. Cardiovascular endurance is the ability of the heart, the blood vessels, and respiratory system to deliver oxygen efficiently over an extended period of time. To develop cardiovascular endurance, 30 to 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity must be accumulated daily. Activities that stimulate development in this area are walking, jogging, biking, rope jumping, aerobic dance, swimming, and a team sports such as Basketball, Ultimate Frisbee, and Soccer.

Body Composition
Body composition is the proportion of body fat to lean body mass.
National Institute of Health recommends that a healthy adult male's body should have between 6 and 24 percent fat and a female should have 14-31%. Athletes, leaner individuals, and more muscular individuals will have a body fat percentage lower than these levels. In general, most athletes experience greater performance benefit at body fat percentages between 7 and 19 percent for men, and 10 and 25 percent for women, depending on the sport.

Flexibility
Flexibility is the range of movement through which a joint or sequence of joints can move.
Quality of life is enhanced by improving and maintaining a good range of motion in the joints. Overall flexibility should be developed with specific joint range of motion needs in mind as the individual joints vary from one to another. Loss of flexibility can be a predisposing factor for physical issues such as pain syndromes or balance disorders.
Gender, age, and genetics are important for range of motion. Exercise including stretching often helps improve flexibility.
Many factors are taken into account when establishing personal flexibility: joint structure, ligaments, tendons, muscles, skin, tissue injury, fat (or adipose) tissue, body temperature, age and gender all influence an individual's range of motion about a joint.

Muscle Strength and Muscle Endurance
Strength is defined as the ability to apply force.

Strength training differs from bodybuilding, Olympic weightlifting, Power lifting, and strongman, which are sports rather than forms of exercise, although training for them is inherently interconnected with strength training, as it is for shot-put, discus, and Highland games. Many other sports use strength training as part of their training regimen, notably football, wrestling, rugby, rowing, lacrosse, basketball, hockey, and track and field.

The principles of strength training
The basic principles of strength training involve a manipulation of the number of repetitions (reps), sets, tempo, exercises and force to cause desired changes in strength, endurance, size or shape by
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