5 Components of Physical Fitness - Learn how to achieve total fitness.

You need to know the 5 components of physical fitness in order to effectively measure your fitness level.

What exactly is physical fitness in the first place?

Physical fitness is the ability to function effectively through your day while still having enough energy left over to handle extra stress on the body, for example, running down the street after your dog that got out of the yard.

To determine your overall fitness, you need to evaluate your performance in each of the following 5 components of physical fitness:

• Cardiovascular Endurance

• Muscular Strength

• Muscular Endurance

• Flexibility

• Body Composition

If you are a person that is in TOTAL physical fitness then you should excel at all of these things. If you only excel at one or two, then improvement can be made in your level of total fitness.

Let's take a marathon runner. I don't know about you, but being able to run 26.2 miles in a few hours is a pretty impressive feat of cardiovascular endurnace. But how to you think that marathon runner would do in a weight lifting competition with a football player?

Probably not so good.

It is a good idea to exercise all areas of physicial fitness for overall better health.

Cardiovascular Endurance:
This tells how good your heart and lungs work together in providing your body the oxygen rich blood it needs during entended periods of stress on the body. Running, cycling, and swimming and jump roping are a few of the things you can do to increase you cradiovacular endurance.

Muscular Strength:
Muscular strenth relates to the amount of force your muscle can apply to an object. This is mostly related to lifting and pushing ovjects, such as carrying groceries from your car.Strength training can help you build your muscular strength which is very important especially for people over the age of 30 when muscle mass starts to deplete.

Muscular Endurance:
Muscular endurance how long you perform a certain action of routine before your muscle get tired or can no longer do what they were doing. Plyometrics are a great way to build speed and muscular endurance.

Flexibility:
Flexibility has always been a problem for me. It is something I continue to work on from week to week but most times I am as stiff as a board. Flexibility tests the ability of your joints to move through an entire normal range of motion. Yoga is great for working on this, as well as pilates and general stretching exercises.

Body Composition:
Body composition is your overall ratio of muscle to mass and can be measured in a number of different ways. Body fat scales can help you measure you body fat index pretty accurately. You can also ask your doctor to do this for you.

Increasing fitness in the first three components will have a positive impact on your body fat. Cardio and extra muscle help to burn more calories leading to less body fat overall.

You should also keep your diet in mind with body fat. You can exercise all you want, but if you continue to eat all the wrong foods you body fat can still be high. There are some people who can do this genetically, but unfortunately, most of us do not fall into that category

You should identify your strengths and weaknesses in the 5 components of physical fitness. As I mentioned before, mine personally is flexibility. I am lucky I can bend over and touch my toes sometimes. Knowing this, I continue to work on flexibility and take Yoga class every week to work on flexibility and range of motion.

If one of you goals in life is to be in total physical fitness, then excelling in all of the 5 components of physical fitness will get you there.

Pictures Courtesy Of:
Ambro