Fitness: Exercise Programs to Build Strength or Endurance
A fitness program can be as simple as taking a daily 30 minute walk or as detailed as a varied plan of scheduled workouts put together by a personal trainer. The most important thing is that your body is getting sronger from your efforts. Everyone should at least do a minimum of four to five 20-minute sessions of exercise per week. You can increase from there.
Some ideas for this minimal workout include:
- Walking more by parking the car farther from the office.
- Swimming regularly at a pool, gym, lake, or beach.
- Using a stationary bike or treadmill while watching TV.
- Riding a bicycle to school, work, or the store.
- Jogging with friends in the morning or evening.
- Taking dance, aerobics, or martial arts classes.
Fitness Basics
Almost everyone would prefer to be fit and not fat. This obsession with fitness may have stemmed not just from health concerns but also from the mirrors of vanity.
No person would want to be caught sitting down with some cellulite baggage on his front and sides. In today's fast-food society, it is ever more important to increase our fitness levels, even for children. The most required commodity for fitness-obsessed people is the scale because they panic the minute they notice even a minimal gain.
Fitness should always be equated with being healthy but some people apparently think that being slim is being fit. Fitness is really not just a word with a one-sided definition. It is much more complicated than that.
Fitness is a combination of many factors
Some people think that fitness means being able to survive a cardio exercise for an hour without feeling so washed out. They think that fitness has something to do with being strong and flexible. They think fitness is being slim and physically attractive.
All the definitions taken as a whole can best describe fitness but each of these definitions should not be taken as it is. This is what is meant by defining fitness in terms of the whole and not just based on the parts.
Fitness is having all those characteristics in balance. It is like being strong but with flexibility. It is having endurance but with strength. It can also mean being slim but not just necessarily so.
Fitness is characterized by strength of the muscles, aerobic and muscular endurance, being flexible and the overall composition of the body.
A person who possesses aerobic endurance is one who is able to perform various exercises targeting different parts of the body at a specified period of time. This can include walking or running exercises that require a good use of oxygen. A person who can do prolonged aerobic low-impact exercises is able to break down more carbohydrates thereby getting more strength and energy in the process.
A person who wants to build a good aerobic program should start doing a 15 minute aerobic exercise and then extending the time to thirty minutes and then even an hour after a certain period so that his body gets used to it.
Gradual increase in aerobic exercise
There is no use tiring the body or creating some shock in the system by exposing it to a rigid aerobic exercise all at one time. A person should allow the body to get used to the rate with which his heart is beating by doing aerobic exercises. Start slow and then increase the phase everyday or every week depending on how much the body can take.
But doing aerobic exercises is not enough to become physically fit. A person has to build the strength of his muscles also by doing activities or exercises that focuses on certain muscles of the body to build strength in that area. It is also recommended that a person should do the muscle training exercises gradually to avoid getting injuries and tiring the body.
It is also wise to rest and shift from one exercise to another to avoid reaching a plateau or that point when any exercise would not matter because it will not produce the desired effect. Some people get into a routine exercise for a long time that they reach a plateau realize they are not producing any effect.
It is also important to build the endurance of the muscles to achieve certain strength. But just like aerobic and muscular exercises, it is important to give it a rest so that it will perform better and so that the person can achieve the best results possible.
A person should also focus on being flexible by doing stretching exercises before and after any exercise. This will not only prepare the body for a good workout but will also avoid getting cramps and injuries.