The 4 Elements of Fitness

There are four core fitness elements-muscular fitness, cardiovascular capacity, flexibility, and lean body mass. Most fitness programs focus on one or two of these elements. Many men prefer to focus on muscular fitness. Runners often focus on cardiovascular capacity. And many health magazines for men and women focus on lean body mass.

But a strong fitness program incorporates all four elements in balance to create a lean, strong, flexible, and tireless body.

*there are other elements of fitness but they fit within these catagories.

Muscular Fitness
Muscular fitness includes two sub-catagories-muscular strength and muscular endurance. Strength is the one rep maximum contracting ability-in other words, how much weight can a muscle lift one time. Endurance is the ability of a muscle to contract repeatedly against a given weight-usually 12 or more reps.

Examples of strength include olympic lifting like deadlifts, cleans, etc. This is a necessary part of fitness because daily activities usually include lifting heavy things such as boxes, bags, etc.

Examples of endurance include push-ups or squats for high reps. This is necessary because we often have to carry objects for distance or move something repeatedly.

Besides making daily tasks easier, muscular fitness increases the body's metabolism, muscle burns calories even at rest, resistence exercises increases bone density, and resistence exercises can help lower resting blood pressure (which cardiorespirtory training does not do).

Ways to target muscular fitness: do resistence exercises both with heavy weights/low reps and low weights/high reps.

Cardiovascular Capacity (CC)
This is the heart's ability to carry enough oxygen to the muscles so the body can do work. This is a catagory where we can sustain the activity for 30-120 minutes. When we're in this catagory, our muscles need oxygen to do work.

Training in this way trains our bodies to take oxygen in better and use it more efficiently, making daily activities easier.

Examples include walking, jogging, jumping rope, gardening, hiking, cycling at a lower level.

Ways to target cardio fitness: walk daily, do circuits with the "talk test" so that you are in the cardio range.

Flexibility
Flexibility is the ability to move a joint in it's full range of motion without stiffness or weakening. This is important especially with age because it keeps the muscles limber and usable.

Training in this way helps us with daily tasks and helps with sustained training because it helps guard against injury and restriction.

Examples of this include the ability to reach down and pick up something off the floor, the ability to reach all the way around with the arm, etc.

Ways to increase flexibility: stretching, full range of motion on exercises, focusing on strengthening in all of joint's movements.

Lean Body Mass
Lean body mass is the percentage of muscle to fat in the body. It often correlates to reduced risk of heart disease and usually correlates with fitness in the other catagories. It is important because it means that the body is made up of more usable weight (muscle) than excess energy stores (fat).

Essential fat helps the body regulate itself, so it is important not to lose essential fat when targeting lean body mass.

This is best measured by weight and body fat.

Ways to reduce fat and increase lean body mass-interval training, bodyweight circuits.

What this has to do with challenges
A good exercise program will target gains in these ares (or decreases in lean body mass). So when picking fitness challenges, alternate your goals between muscular, cardio, and flexibility areas.