You may get trapped if you are doing the same thing over and over again as a fitness routine. A well-designed fitness program brings growth. It shouldn’t be like if you are into weight lifting, so you just lift weights, or if you are a runner, so you only run. A well-rounded fitness routine includes five elements of exercises that you may not know.
We spend hours finding out the core components of fitness. And we found that body composition, muscle strength, muscle endurance, cardiovascular endurance, and flexibility are the main five elements. A well-designed program involves all of them. So, we take a closer look at each element and figure out why it is important for the training phase. Let’s go…
Table of Contents
Five Elements Of Exercise – Body Composition
Our body consists of water, protein, fat, nutrients, and minerals. Understanding the value of each one will help to reap maximum benefits. When you know your body composition, which includes body fat and muscle ratio, you will easily find out whether the training is working for you or not.
For example, if someone is in training for 6 months, How does he/she know if their body composition has changed or not? Did he/she lose weight or gain extra weight? They never know unless they use monitoring tools.
Monitoring your body fat and muscles is an important step. It will give you an insight into your training. You will be able to see whether the plan is going accordingly or not. Body composition analysis is an excellent tool for keeping track of your health and fitness over time.
Flexibility
Flexibility is all about how far you can stretch or move your body parts without feeling pain. I hope this component of fitness includes mobility as well. Well, flexibility is an essential part of fitness. There are plenty of ways to improve flexibility. You can do dynamic stretching, pilates, yoga, myofascial release, and even massage as well.
If your body becomes flexible, it can help improve posture, improve movement, and performance, balance muscles, and reduce the risk of injury because your body becomes flexible.
Your body will not be able to perform activities if you lack flexibility. If you are new, you may have experienced that your back has become tight. When you lift a weight, it is because your body is less flexible.
To make your body flexible, you can use a foam roller before training. You can do this for at least five days a week, and you can also add a flexibility workout on your off days.
Muscle Strength
Muscle strength helps to improve the ability to lift or move objects. Muscle strength is often defined as how much weight you can lift or how much force you can exert. The strength is tested within a given time frame.
When a person reaches their seventh decade, they lose 30% of their strength. After the age of 35, most people begin to lose 3 to 5% of their strength. Therefore, we think that it’s better to increase your strength and maintain it. You can do various muscle strengthening exercises to maintain fitness even in your 50s.
Muscular Endurance
Muscle endurance is one of the important components of fitness. It is an integral part of the training session. Muscular endurance is tested based on how long a group of muscles can work against resistance training for a sustained period.
To develop muscle endurance, you have to work at least one day a week. Follow up a muscle endurance workout with strength training. Well, if you are an athlete or fitness lover, you should work periodically on muscle endurance to perform day-to-day activities.
Muscular endurance is not just lifting or carrying weight or something, it is about increasing muscle strength. To increase muscle endurance, you should start with light weights. The lighter weight will train your muscle fibers that are needed for muscular endurance, then go on to heavyweight and high reps.
Cardiovascular Endurance
Cardiovascular endurance is also known as aerobic fitness or cardiorespiratory endurance. It refers to the ability to effectively and efficiently intake oxygen and supply it to your body organs, such as the heart, lungs, vessels, veins, etc. Furthermore, cardiovascular endurance also relates to performing training over a sustained period.
For example, someone can do a 15–20 minute HIIT workout at home or in the gym, or train with cardio equipment.
Cardiovascular endurance helps your body to keep engaged with activities like running, cycling, doing aerobic exercises, or anything that forces your cardiovascular system to work for an extended time. There are many tools to test your cardiovascular endurance and they will also help to build cardiovascular endurance.
Five Elements Of Exercise – Take Message Home
So, the overall total fitness is judged by just looking at one factor. Each component of the fitness should be considered. Complete fitness is defined by how strong and flexible you are as a whole. The bench press is not just enough. You are required to do running as well. There are five major elements of fitness and one should excel in all of them to become perfectly fit.
We have put together all five elements of fitness you should know before. Working on each factor will help to achieve the ultimate fitness goals. Design a fitness routine that comprises all these five elements. It will help to perform training at optimal level and also boost your overall health.
