What is Fitness
Fitness is very fashionable in today’s society. From practicing sports it has become a lifestyle for many people who seek to acquire healthy habits. The combination of exercise and a healthy and balanced diet are the keys to this concept whose main objective is to find personal well-being through sport and good nutrition.
You can find thousands of personal trainers, ‘miracle diets’ and formulas as unlikely as they are harmful to health with the sole purpose of losing weight and getting in shape, but fitness is far from all this. Healthy habits both in food and in sports are enough to enjoy a good physical condition. To discover what fitness is and its benefits, we recommend that you continue reading this article. According To A Few Key Points, What is fitness? Basics and Introduction to an Overall Healthy life!
Table Of Content
1. What is fitness and its origin
2. fitness benefits
3. fitness activities
What is fitness and its origin?
The meaning of fitness encompasses two definitions linked to each other. The first refers to fitness as the state of physical health and well-being achieved by leading a healthy life based on constant exercise over time and a healthy diet.
The second definition refers to fitness as the set of gymnastic exercises repeated several times each week with the aim of achieving optimal physical shape. Generally, these exercises are done in specific sports spaces such as gyms.
The objectives of fitness are to improve aerobic resistance, obtain muscle strength, have greater flexibility, achieve localized muscle strength and achieve body balance while respecting healthy percentages in bones, muscles, and fat.
origin of fitness
The birth of modern fitness is credited to French-born gymnast Hippolyte Triat, who opened the first commercial gym. Triat was in charge of opening his first two gymnasiums in the 1840s: the first in the city of Brussels and the second in the French capital of Paris.
At the end of the 19th century, Eugen Sandow opened another gym. Sandow himself organized in 1901 the first physical competition in the world. He subsequently promoted a fitness lifestyle through the marketing of various dietary publications, products and equipment through a chain of specialist fitness centers across Britain.
Fitness Benefits
The practice of fitness not only brings benefits to physical fitness but also to mental health and a person’s quality of life. These are the main ones you can get by following this lifestyle:
- Increase flexibility: it is a capacity that is lost over the years, but if you perform sports routines frequently you will be able to slow down this loss. Flexibility increases the range of movement for the practice of different disciplines and helps to carry out daily activities that, in other circumstances, pose a risk of injury. If you want to know more about increasing flexibility, we recommend this other OneHOWTO article on 14 flexibility exercises.
- Take care of the cardiovascular system: fitness helps reduce the risk of cardiovascular problems. Thus, it helps to extend your life, especially if you suffer from heart or blood vessel disorders.
- Bone care: the risk of osteoporosis is reduced because it promotes muscle development, thus protecting the bone and improving bone restructuring. Fitness also increases the mobility of the joints and enhances the ability to react, avoiding the risk of possible falls.
- Reduces depression: sports routines also provide positive referrals to the brain. Muscular contractions in the middle of a particular conditioning promote signals that affect the deviations of neurons that cause depression, thus reducing them.
- Strengthens self-esteem: full mental health is the basis on which the perceived changes in the rest of the body are sustained. One of the great benefits of fitness is self-esteem, since the evolution experienced in the body, the feeling of energy in each workout and the achievement of personal goals allow an increase in individual assessment.
- Regulates weight: a balanced diet and exercise routine make ideal weight a realistic goal. Fitness helps maintain body fat in ranges considered healthy (6% to 24% in men and 14% to 31% in women).
Fitness activities
Do you want to be a fitness person? A good diet and an exercise routine adjusted to your age and your physical characteristics is all you need to practice it. Some of the fitness activities you can do are the following:
- Pound fitness: uses rock music while performing isometric, plyometric, yoga and pilates postures, combined with regular exercises in aerobics classes.
- TRX: is a training modality based on the use of body weight. It is used to improve muscle power and strength training in combination with aerobic exercises such as swimming, skating, running or cycling.
- Body pump: this is a sports activity that combines anaerobic weight lifting exercises with aerobic rhythms more typical of stepping or an aerobics class.
- Body balance: it is an alternative for people looking to train gently, with effective body and mental activity through movements performed in a choreographed way to the rhythm of music chosen especially for each part of the session.