The basic idea of physical fitness is that it refers to an individual’s ability to perform physical activities, but there are actually various components of fitness.
Each component plays a vital role in deciding your overall fitness level. You can tell that you’re genuinely physically fit if you excel at each component. As such, this guide will show you how to boost your fitness with these components in mind.
But first, what are these components?
Components Of Fitness
Generally, there are five physical fitness components, and you most likely have heard of them. These include:
• Body composition
• Flexibility
• Cardiovascular endurance
• Muscular strength
• Muscular endurance
Being physically fit doesn’t mean being flexible but not having enough muscle mass. It’s essential that you take care of each aspect, no matter how hard or time-consuming it may be.
Tips To Boost Your Fitness
Here’s how you can boost your fitness levels with these components in mind.
1. Take Necessary Supplements
As mentioned earlier, you shouldn’t focus on just one component. You can’t do push-ups all day and nothing else. That would result in an imbalance in your body and can sometimes lead to issues. As such, having a method to improve each component simultaneously would greatly help, hence the need for supplements.
Supplements tend to contain numerous nutrients. For example, the Optimum Nutrition supplement contains numerous nutrients, such as vitamin C, protein, folic acid, and creatine. Each nutrient can provide these benefits:
• Vitamin C can improve connective tissues, resulting in better flexibility
• Protein can lead to better muscle growth to improve your endurance and strength
• Folic acid can lead to a healthier cardiovascular system
• Creatine can increase your lean and muscle mass
2. Monitor Your Sleep Schedule
Your body composition is the ratio of your muscle mass, organs, bone, and fat. One can measure their body composition through various tests, such as readings or weighing, and this component is crucial since it roughly decides your body’s capabilities.
For example, if you have more fat than muscles, it’d be more challenging for you to perform well in exercise. But if it’s the other way around, working out will be a piece of cake.
Nutrition and exercise are the most basic methods to improve your body composition, but not many people know that sleep also contributes a lot to your body composition.
A person who sleeps less often has worse body composition than those that sleep frequently. The ideal length is seven to nine hours, but this isn’t the only thing to consider. You also have to consider the quality of your sleep. More particularly, you need to enter stage 3 sleep, which is also known as deep sleep.
You can accomplish this by:
• Getting plenty of exercises
• Avoiding caffeine before sleeping
• Reading a book
• Taking a bath
• Scheduling your sleep
Once you follow these tips, you can expect an improvement in your body composition. Now that that’s dealt with, the next tip will involve your flexibility.
3. Get A Massage Regularly
Having a high level of flexibility means that your joints can move smoothly from different angles. An individual can test their flexibility through exercises, like sit and reach. Flexibility can also prevent injuries like arthritis and knee pain during workouts. Getting a massage is a perfect way to improve flexibility without much effort.
For starters, massage can improve the elasticity of soft tissues, improving your flexibility. Massages can also decrease your body’s tension, leading to a smoother circulation of oxygen and nutrients into your muscles. This increase in oxygen can help make your muscles much more flexible.
Even if you don’t have any plans of boosting your fitness, it’s still a good idea to get a massage every now and then to relieve some stress from every day’s work. Speaking of which, you might want to pay close attention to the next section as it can help your life in the future.
4. Gradually Increase F.I.T.T. Plan
Cardiovascular endurance refers to how much work your heart and lungs can take before needing to rest. If you want to have a shorter downtime, you’ll have to increase your endurance.
The reason why cardiovascular endurance is essential is that not only will it improve your health, but its effects are also noticeable as you age. To improve your cardiovascular endurance, you need to know about the F.I.T.T (Frequency, Intensity, Time, and Type) plan.
If you feel like you’re no longer having any difficulty with your current routine, do it more frequently, longer, and harder. You may also change up the exercise every now and then.
5. Undergo Muscle-Strengthening Activities
As you may already know, there are countless types of activities. If you want to improve your heart health, jogging is the perfect activity. If you want to improve your flexibility, maybe yoga would help. Since muscular strength deals with the amount of force your muscles can exert, push-ups would be your best bet.
Other examples of muscle-strengthening activities include:
• Weight lifting
• Hill climbing
• Resistance bands training
Although the more, the better, it’s still important to take short breaks. That way, you can avoid potential injuries from overfatigue. However, if you don’t want to take short breaks frequently, improving your muscle endurance would be a great idea.
6. Try Circuit Training
Circuit training is the process of combining six or more exercises and performing these exercises repeatedly over a period of time. Since muscular endurance deals with how much your muscles can work without suffering from fatigue, working out continuously with as little rest as possible is the perfect way to go about it.
However, before you undergo intense training, it’s advisable to ask your doctor first if your body can handle your scheduled circuit training plan.
Conclusion
Regardless of how motivated you are at boosting your fitness levels, you still can’t change the fact that your body has its limits. With that said, make sure you practice moderation on your way to achieving a fit body. Otherwise, you might suffer from irreversible injuries before you even accomplish your goals.
