So what is fitness anyway? Wikipedia defines physical fitness as the capacity of the heart, blood vessels, lungs, and muscles to function at optimum efficiency. Dr. Frederick C. Hatfield PhD., Founder of the International Sports Sciences Association defines physical fitness a little better. He defines physical fitness as the physiological contribution to wellness through exercise and nutrition behaviors that maintain a high aerobic capacity, balanced body composition, and adequate strength and flexibility to minimize risk of chronic health problems and to enhance the enjoyment of life. I think that is a much more complete definition, but when lumped together they are both pointing in the same direction; physical fitness is built on cardiovascular fitness, strength fitness, flexibility, and nutrition. We will talk about nutrition in that section of this website. Here we are concerned with the things we can do by movements of the body to achieve fitness.

What is cardiovascular fitness? Well, the cardiovascular system is composed of the heart and blood vessels. The heart is the most amazing muscle in the body. The heart is a remarkable engine of sorts. Its basic duty is to take oxygen-laden blood from the lungs and pump it through the body, and then it takes the carbon dioxide-laden blood and pumps it back to the lungs where it is exchanged for more oxygen. Sounds easy, huh? Well, the other part is the blood vessels that are the highways that the blood runs in. Anyway, to make matter simple for this introduction, the heart is a “use it or loose it” type of muscle. How do we “use” it you ask? Simply by exercise which can be as simple as walking. Get up! Get Out! Move! Moreover, your heart will thank you for it by rewarding you with good cardiovascular fitness.

Strength fitness is basically using all the other muscles in our body. Strength is defined as using muscular force to make an action. That action can be as simple as walking or picking up a glass of water. We are using our muscles to do that motion. Strength training involves using resistance to build up our muscle fitness to allow us to do more work with our muscles. All of our muscles have the “use it or loose it” feature about them, and they are wanting and needing to be used in order to hold the body up against gravity and allow you the freedom to be able to get around and do what you want to in this life.

Flexibility fitness is related to how flexible our joints are. In fact, the definition of flexibility is simply the range of motion around a joint. That joint can be the elbow, knee, waist, ankles, neck, etc. Flexibility describes the relationship between muscles, tendons, ligaments, skin, and the joint itself. If you have the strength to move the world in a muscle but cannot move the joint closest to that muscle, the net result is that you are not strong at all.

Fitness involves all the body systems described above working together and in unison. If we keep in mind that we are using body systems and understand how each woks to give us total fitness, we are on the way to obtaining the fitness we want in our lives.