Exercise Health Fitness

Health and Fitness

Many people look at fitness as something that is aesthetically pleasing but not important to health. Health and Fitness are connected in many ways and you can’t truly have one without the other.

Fitness is broken down into 3 areas: Cardiorespiratory, Strength and Flexibility.

Cardiorespiratory fitness has a direct correlation with the level of health in an individual. A person that participates in regular aerobic activity will be in better health than someone that does not.

Can I expect any health benefits from weight training?

Weight trainin, long recognized as a method to build and maintain muscle strength and endurance, was once considered stressful to the heart. Its benefits to health have emerged only recently. The American Heart Association’s science advisory now endorses a program of progressive weight training to increase muscle strength and endurance; prevent and manage several chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease; and enhance psychological well-being.

By promoting strong muscles in the back and abdomen, weight training can improve posture and reduce the risk of back injury. Weight training can also help prevent the decline in physical mobility that often accompanies aging. Older adults, even those in their 80’s, who participate in weight training programs not only gain muscle strength, but also improve their muscle endurance, which enables them to walk significantly longer before exhaustion. Leg strength and walking endurance are powerful indicators of an older adult’s physical abilities.

As an added benefit, weight training to improve muscle strength and endurance can also help to maximize and maintain bone mass. Research shows that even in women past menopause (when most women are losing bone), a one-year program of weight training improves bones density.

Weight training can emphasize either muscle strength or muscle endurance. To emphasize muscle strength, combine high resistance (heavy weight) with a low number of repetitions. To emphasize muscle endurance, combine less resistance (lighter weight) with more repetitions. Weight training enhances sports performance. Swimmers can develop a more efficient stroke, and tennis players a more powerful serve, when they train with weights.

How does cardiorespiratory training benefit the heart?

Although weight training provides some cardiovascular benefits, the kind of exercise most famous for improving the health of the heart is cardiorespiratory endurance training. Everyone has felt the heartbeat pick up the pace during physical activity. Cardiorespiratory endurance determines how long a person can remain active with an elevated heart rate-it is the ability of the heart and lungs to sustain a given physical demand. Working muscles need abundant oxygen to produce energy, and the heart and lungs work together to provide that oxygen. Cardiorespiratory endurance training, therefore, is aerobic.

The body’s adaptation to the demands of aerobic activity involves a complex sequence of heat-healthy events. Cardiorespiratory endurance improves-the body delivers oxygen more efficiently. Wight cardiorespiratory endurance, the total blood volume and the number of red blood cells increase, so the blood can carry more oxygen. The heart muscle becomes stronger and larger, and its cardiac output increases. Each beat empties the heat’s chambers more completely, so the heart pumps more blood per beat-its stroke volume increases. This makes fewer beats necessary, so the pulse rate falls. The muscles that inflate and deflate the lungs gain strength and endurance, so breathing becomes more efficient. Blood moves easily through the blood vessels because the muscles of the heart contract more powerfully, and contraction of the skeletal muscles pushes the blood through the veins. Such improvements keep resting blood pressure normal. The improvements that come with cardiorespiratory endurance also raise blood HDL, the lipoprotein associated with lower heart disease risk.

Which activities produce these beneficial changes? Effective activities elevate the heart rate, are sustained for longer than 20 minutes, and use most of the large-muscle groups of the body (legs, buttocks, and abdomen). Examples are swimming, cross-country skiing, rowing, fast walking, jogging, fast bicycling, soccer, hockey, basketball, inline-skating, lacrosse and rugby.

An informal pulse check can give you some indication of how conditioned your heart is. The average resting pulse rate for adults is around 70 beats per minute. Active people can have resting heart rates of 50 or even lower. To take your pulse, follow these directions:

How to take your resting pulse:
Using a watch or clock with a second hand, place your hand over your heart or your finger firmly over an artery at the underside of the wrist or side of the throat under the jawbone. Start counting your pulse at a convenient second, and continue counting for 10 seconds. If a heartbeat occurs exactly on the 10th second, count it as one-half beat. Multiply by 6 to obtain the beats per minute.