Fitness

For years everyone has known that regular exercise along with good nutrition is good for their health. The trick is how to build sound exercise habits and a balanced diet into your busy schedule. The stress of modern times mandates that you develop and maintain a fit, trim and fully functioning body. Being active and physically fit heightens your self-expression and self-esteem.

Research polls indicate that people today are becoming more health centered. As a result, people are becoming more interested in making fitness exercise an integral part of their life-style. This article will introduce you to the why of fitness. You will learn all about exercise and it's benefits and will also learn how to structure a personal exercise program that is safe, reasonable, effective, and, most important, rewarding and fun.

Give some thought to the following statements:

• In the past, health meant only absence of disease. Today we have a much broader perspective and consider physical fitness to be a key component of total health.
• The modern life-style fosters unfitness because technological advances have eliminated much fitness producing physical exertion from everyday activities.
• Everyday activities, even for the laborer, no longer adequately stimulate the heart, lungs, and muscles to produce physiological benefits.
• Society, especially the corporate world, is beginning to realize the importance of health promotion and the role of exercise in developing and maintaining good health habits.
• Being physically fit means living at your fullest physical potential. Physical fitness is the capability of the heart, blood vessels, lungs, and muscles to function at optimal efficiency. It provides a basis for living a full and rewarding life style.
• The basic health components of physical fitness are cardio-respiratory endurance, strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, and body composition.
• To be physically fit does take effort (yes, some sweat, too!), but exercise does not have to be punishing to help you develop and maintain physical fitness.
• Regular and vigorous exercise of the total body is a necessary ingredient of muscular and circulatory fitness - the key to good health and well being.