We talk about fitness a great deal here in the fitness blog, but we don’t always talk about what fitness is – exactly. Do you know what physical fitness is? Ultimately, it means a couple of things that are similar, but not altogether the same.
First and foremost, physical fitness refers to the general state of your personal fitness – this includes your mental, emotional and physical fitness. There is also fitness that is specific – based on specific training to accomplish a specific task. For example, a dancer who trains to perform a specific routine is still engaging in fitness – but they are looking to achieve a specific goal.
Overall physical fitness is broken down into several categories:
- Agility
- Balance
- Body Composition
- Cardiovascular Endurance
- Coordination
- Flexibility
- Muscle Strength
- Muscle Endurance
- Speed
These categories refer to the different aspects of your personal fitness and no, we don’t work on all of them at any one given time. Coordination, for example, involves more than just lifting and breathing, but is related to sports such as baseball and gymnastics. Speed isn’t necessarily fundamental to a daily workout, but if you’re a bicyclist or a runner, then you want good speed.
Body composition is important because it helps you look at your BMI and other factors that influence your overall fitness and these are just a few of the things that make up our personal fitness. When we talk about emotional and mental fitness in conjunction with physical fitness, we’re talk about the triangle of health.
It’s a cycle, after all. When you’re depressed, you likely won’t exercise that much. When you look at yourself badly or you think the whole world is against you, you don’t see the need to exert yourself. Each part of the triangle affects the other. It’s also true that when you engage in physical fitness activities, you boost your mental and your emotional moods – these help bolster your physical fitness and so forth and so on. And in all honesty – that’s what the fitness blog is about – boosting your fitness – all the way around.