If you ask your average person what it means to be fit, you get answers ranging from, “To be able to run a marathon,” “To be able to climb a flight of stairs without being breathless,” or “To be able to dance in a party all night without dying,” to, “To have a healthy heart and lungs,” “To be able to do simple exercises without feeling faint or ill,” or “To feel good and look how you feel.” There is no one definition of fitness and this has caused a lot of controversy in the fitness world. Doctors look at it from one aspect, the average person, another and trainers see if differently from all. In fact, this discrepancy is the reason that CrossFit is often looked down upon or insulted. To help solve this problem, let’s look at fitness from a holistic point of view. There are eleven components of fitness (10 are trainable and 1 is the result of the others) and any 1 (or combination of them) can be used to define fitness for an individual.

This week, we will define the Health related components:

1. Flexibility — This is a measure of the elasticity of muscles and connective tissue as well as a determination of how bones fit together, allowing an adequate range of motion. This can generally be trained by overstretching (stretching for 30 seconds or more per joint).
2. Cardiovascular Endurance — This is a measure of the efficiency of the cardiovascular system (heart, lungs, blood vessels) to get blood (containing oxygen and metabolic substrate/food or metabolic waste/carbon dioxide and other things) to and from the muscles. This allows the muscles to work efficiently once they are not damaged.
3. Muscular Endurance/Stamina — This is a
   measure of how long a muscle can work. It relies on a muscle’s ability to create energy for its own use. The more energy it can produce, the longer it can work before going into fatigue. This also affects recovery speeds.
4. Muscular Strength — This is a measure of the maximum load a person can move for a single rep/lift/push. Powerlifters and Olympic Lifters focus heavily on this component as they have to lift a certain weight only once for it to be counted as a success.
5. Power — Okay, so this one straddles Health- and Skill-based components, but I’ll put it here for now. This is the muscle’s ability to move a heavy load quickly. It can be thought of as a combination of Strength and Speed. This is the most sport-translatable component since most sports require quick movement (linear or otherwise).

Next week, we will take a look at the Skill related components as well as the one un-trainable component (which is, in fact, health related).

to be continued…