The key to achieving physical fitness is finding forms of activity that you like to do in each of the three main areas (strength, flexibility, and endurance). This is one way to obtain the many health benefits that come with regular exercise. Regular physical activity is an effective way to manage your weight. It also helps tremendously in reducing stress and promoting mental and spiritual fitness.
Physical fitness involves 3 areas:
The endurance component focuses on developing your heart and circulatory system so that nutrients are efficiently delivered to all the body's tissues and waste products are rapidly whisked away. Improving your overall muscular strength helps you in a wide variety of daily activities and helps increase the rate at which you burn calories. Flexibility involves regular stretching to keep your muscles limber and prevent injuries. Clicking on any of these categories will provide you with information about each type of physical fitness.
Personal genetics: Your Genes and Your Fitness
Personal genetics is the science concerned with how genes and lifestyle factors work together. The interaction goes both ways: the expression of the information encoded in a gene can be influenced by lifestyle factors, such as diet or exercise, and a person's functional ability, such as exercise endurance capacity, can be influenced by the information in a gene (its DNA sequence). The main research focus of personal genetics to date has been in the area of chronic disease, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer, and diabetes. It's long been known that exercise improves the outcome of those with these diseases and helps to lower the susceptibility of those at risk for developing these disorders. Personal genetics has provided valuable genetic approaches to understanding just how exercise works its magic in both disease treatment and prevention. Click on the appropriate link for overviews of Gene Basics and Personal genetics to understand the importance of an individual's gene variants in their response to exercise or other lifestyle factors.
Personal genetics has obvious applications to the broad area of physical fitness and performance. One important goal is to be able to pinpoint which exercise regimen would be most effective for the individual interested in fitness and weight management. Another important goal is defining the training regimen that would be most productive for the performance athlete.
Click here to explore some of the current research findings that link specific genes with fitness and performance.
Benefits of Physical Activity
Why should you exercise? Sure, it's trendy to go out and buy the latest Pilates equipment to use at home. Or, you may think that joining a gym is a sure route to fitness. Unfortunately, once the novelty wears off you'll need to ask yourself, "Will I still be motivated to move?" Some lucky ones just love to exercise. Many of us need the extra motivation of remembering the many health benefits of exercise. Clicking on the health benefits below will provide you with plenty of excuses for an active life. Finding ways to sneak physical activity into your daily routine and placing daily physical activity as a priority is where to begin in the lifelong journey to wellness.
Why should I exercise?
Exercise can be your vehicle for:
If you're still looking for reasons to get off the couch and get on your feet, the list continues. Exercise has a role in preventing or managing:
Motivation to Move
Once you see the powerful effect exercise and fitness can have in your life, you may wonder why you didn't warm up to this whole exercise thing sooner. In general, health experts agree that a sedentary lifestyle is not health-promoting. This news is hardly a secret yet 50% of Americans are not physically active on a regular basis. We continue to find ways to streamline our lives--drive-through windows, online shopping, delivered groceries. Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health found that the amount of time people spend in front of the television on a weekly basis is equivalent to the length of a part-time job. Couch potato time and conveniences will decrease your daily physical activity and the number of calories you burn every second. Without balancing the calories you eat with the calories you burn, weight gain happens.
Plus, we're continually aging and we seem to slow down at a fairly young age. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that physical activity declines more than two-fold from early adulthood into our senior years. What's even more unsettling news is that 33% of young people don't exercise regularly. Time constraints, aging, and technological advancements are here to stay. This means it will be up to you to find lasting ways to increase your physical activity. If you've already found a way to have an active lifestyle, then keep it up. The rest of you need to get on board! Exercising as little as 30 minutes a day can help you manage your weight. Plus, it helps you dodge some major health risks. An extra bonus for those of you who are trying to turn back the clock may be an increase in longevity. Researchers have found that by exercising you reduce your biological age three years from your chronological age. Now is the time to get moving! Click here for How can I get 30 minutes of physical activity a day?