The Five Components Of Fitness

Understanding The Five Components Of Fitness To Aid In Weight Loss

The five components of fitness build a structure to sustain health, wellbeing and weight loss. Building your knowledge on fitness and health will aid in your weight loss by following the correct technique and framework within your fitness and health.

At FitFarms we hold workshops run by our nutrition specialist to provide knowledge on the importance of the 5 components of fitness, giving our clients a greater understanding to their health and weight loss approach.

What are the 5 Components?

Cardiovascular Endurance

Cardiovascular endurance is your body’s ability to exercise for a period of time without getting tired, your heart and lungs ability to supply oxygen you need while exercising. You may be familiar with the term cardio exercise, any exercise that raises your heart rate and causes a sweat. For example, running, swimming or cycling all or moderate to high forms of cardio.

To improve your cardiovascular endurance, working your way up gradually from low to higher intensity cardio will slowly improve your cardiovascular endurance. Benefiting the strength of your lungs and heart, reducing heart disease risks, improving blood pressure levels and making the road to weight loss progressive and easier.

Muscular Strength and Endurance

Muscular strength is the amount of force your body can produce once at a maximum effort. For example, the maximum weight you can lift in one rep at the gym. Muscular endurance is how long your body’s muscle can sustain to repeat movement over a period of time. For example, to test your muscular endurance you can test how many times you can do a full squat with a moderate weight to your muscular strength before breaking form.

The benefits of working towards improving your muscular strength and endurance include a boost in metabolism, enhanced exercise performance/endurance, increased stamina and overall improved day to day body function.

Flexibility

Flexibility is how much range your joints can endure. Having good flexibility allows your body to move easily, supporting your ability to do a range of exercise and improving daily function and comfort.

Exercises such as yoga, palates and mobility classes improve flexibility, which will support you in other areas of exercise as well as your wellbeing.

Body Composition

Body composition is the fat mass to non-fat mass within your body. This can be measured through fat percentage and muscle mass. When your muscle mass weighs more than your body fat, this usually represents a healthy body composition. A healthy body fat percentage for women is around 25% to 31% and for men 18% to 24%.

During weight loss people tend to focus on the number shown on the scales, however understanding body composition allows you to know a overall understanding of your health and fitness level. When you gain muscle your weight also increases, so understanding your body fat percentage and how much fat your loosing represents your weight loss and health more accurately.