Do you Know what It Means to be Fit?

                                                                                         

In the springtime we all start thinking about how we could be slimmer, fitter and look better for the summer, if we haven't already taken up a gym membership in January and let it lapse fairly quickly as the first flush of enthusiasm faded. Through all this most of us do not stop and think about what fitness actually means to us. Being fit is a desired state but this state is not defined and we have little idea what all the measurements of fitness mean, all of which makes it less likely that our rather vague plan will be ultimately successful. Physiotherapists may have a somewhat clearer grasp of some of the concepts but most will not be very precise.

A major health focus in the community is the management and prevention of coronary heart disease, a very common health condition and responsible for a large annual death toll. We can all work at our risk factors and bring the various parameters closer towards safe limits. Fitness is not one thing but composed of various abilities, parts of each of which may need to be developed to reach an acceptable result. Allowing one of the components to be ignored can limit the potential fitness we might achieve.

Aerobic fitness is the ability of our bodies to maintain a level of activity for a length of time, for example to run for 20 minutes without stopping. Doing this at somewhat hard, point 13 on the Borg Exertion Scale, ensures a training effect and that we can keep the level up for a useful length of time.

Muscular fitness is the ability of our muscles to exert sufficient force for our requirements and for long enough (muscular endurance).

To achieve flexibility we need to ensure our tissues have the appropriate lengths to allow functional extensibility of our body structures.

As we exert significant forces and move a high speeds we need to train our balance to allow us a stable base from which to exert this precise control.

To put all the previous aspects together, power, endurance, strength, balance and aerobic capacity we need to develop coordination, a dynamic control of movement.

Health and fitness can be investigated by a variety of measurement techniques which indicate the status of particular body systems. Blood pressure measurements should be not more than one hundred and forty over ninety to be in the healthy range. The upper number indicates the aortic pressure during the ventricular pumping action known as systole (sist-oley) and the lower number indicates aortic pressure when the left ventricle is filling ready for the next pumping phase, i.e. during diastole (di-ast-oley). If the blood vessel walls are flexible they give under pressure, allowing that pressure to drop while stiffer vessel walls allow increased pressures throughout the system.

High blood pressure has consequences which relate to heart disease, kidney function, peripheral blood supply and the likelihood of stroke. This is connected with total cholesterol levels which should be less than 5.0 mmol/l (five millimoles per litre), which indicates the risk for developing atherosclerosis and heart disease to some degree. Body mass is another indicator of our present and future health, with the Body Mass Index (BMI) a useful but not infallible indicator of our status in the health stakes. The BMI is often indicated on a big colourful poster, charting the relationship between our height and our bodyweight and dividing the results into underweight, healthy, overweight and obese.

Healthy BMI values are stated as between twenty and twenty-four point nine, so by examining the chart we can predict our ideal weight ranges for our height and so realistically assess what we need to do. The BMI may have some limitations as it can give what seems like unrealistically low healthy ranges in some people, perhaps related to their particular structure such as having a high muscular bulk or large bodily frame. However, it does give a general indicator of the suggested healthy weight. Body fat content, another health indicator, is recommended to be between twenty one and twenty seven percent.

About the author:
Jonathan Blood Smyth is the Superintendent of Physiotherapists at an NHS hospital in the South-West of the UK. He writes articles about back pain, neck pain, and injury management. If you are looking for physiotherapists in Londonvisit his website.

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