What exactly is fitness?

The ability of the human body to function with the necessary determination and alertness, without unnecessary fatigue, and with enough energy to engage in leisure activities, as well as the ability to overcome physical stress is the essence of fitness.

The point of fitness is not to be lean, have a small waist circumference, or bulging accentuated muscles. It is a combination of traits that allow us to express our full potential in performing extreme physical activity. In the physical sense, fitness includes the work of the heart, lungs and the work of all muscle groups in the body.

Namely, fitness takes into account our cardio respiratory endurance, muscle strength, endurance and flexibility. To some extent, fitness activity also affects our mental health and emotional development, because what we do with our body also affects what we can do with our mind.

Although physical fitness and good health affect each other, it is not one and the same thing. Really healthy people can be physically incapacitated due to lack of physical activity. On the other hand, physically fit people perform their daily tasks with less effort, this does not necessarily mean that they are also physically healthy in a medical sense.

So, we can also characterize the concept of fitness as the ability to perform physical efforts, while leaving us enough energy reserves to counteract a sudden, additional physical challenge that we did not count on. Being fit means being in a state of good physical and mental health, good physical condition resulting from regular physical exercise and proper nutrition. It is the goal of every individual to feel good in their skin, to be healthy and able to perform daily duties. This is also the main goal of fitness.

So, fitness includes 5 primary components:

- Cardiovascular ability

- Muscle strength and muscular endurance

- Flexibility

- Mental focus

- Body composition (body composition)

Cardiovascular ability (endurance) as the first component of fitness can be simply characterized as the ability to perform exercises in which large muscles participate, dynamic exercises of medium to high intensity over a long period of time. The development of the cardiovascular system has many beneficial effects: increased energy and endurance, reduced blood pressure and blood pressure, reduced physical fat, prevention of heart disease, lower heart rate at rest and during activity in relation to an untrained person, reduced sensitivity to pain due to higher levels of endorphins in the brain, increased bone mass, etc.

Muscle strength as an integral part of fitness is nothing but the ability of muscles to work against resistance, and it is achieved by gradually increasing the load when conducting resistance training (weight training). This results in an increase in pure lean body mass, increased bone density and mass, increased basal metabolic rate, increased coordination, and more.

Muscle endurance as a component of fitness is defined as the ability of muscles to contract frequently over a long period of time without becoming exhausted. Muscle endurance is achieved by increasing the number of repetitions in resistance training (weights). Muscle endurance is a key component in raising the energy levels needed to perform daily activities, recreational activities as well as planned training.

Flexibility as an integral part of fitness is also extremely important. It is presented as the ability of joints, tendons, muscles to go through the full range of motion, the ability to move, move and recover without injuries. Flexibility is mobility, freedom of movement or possible range of motion in a single joint, group of joints or the whole body. Greater flexibility means less possibility of injuries during training and greatly increases the quality of performance in training.

Body composition is given by the diameter (proportion) of muscles, bones, fat and other tissues that all together make up the total body weight.