The Five areas of physical fitness

Each of the five areas of physical fitness plays an important role in being fit, and one is not more important than another.
 

Cardio respiratory fitness is how efficiently your heart and lungs are able to deliver oxygen to the working muscle, which means it has a direct impact on both strength and endurance. The heart is a muscle and must be worked to be strong and efficient just as other muscles of the body. Not only is cardio the base for all activity, but keeping your heart in good condition also helps prevent many health problems.
 

Resistance training involves challenging your muscles to work against an external force in order to improve endurance, increase muscle mass, and improve strength. It is imperative to include resistance training in your workout plan because strong muscles make strong tendons, which make strong and dense bones. This in turn reduces the risk of osteoporosis.

After age 20, adults lose five to seven pounds of muscle every decade. Resistance training will help stop this loss of muscle and rebuild the muscle at any age! Muscle is active tissue, so you must use it or you will lose it. Having strong, toned muscles improves your ability to perform everyday activities, including getting in and out of the bathtub and carrying grocery bags.

Flexibility is the range of motion around a joint. It is the cornerstone of your workout program because your muscles move only as far as your flexibility allows. Tight joints restrict range of motion, causing you to compensate the movement by using other muscles. This can cause muscle imbalances that affect posture, performance, and movement efficiency. Loss of flexibility can also lead to lost independence; for example, you can no longer bend to clip your toenails or reach the high shelf in your kitchen.

Incorporating flexibility into your workout (at any age) can improve posture and make movement more efficient.
 

Balance is the ability to control your body’s position in space. It involves preconception, which is how your body takes the information it receives from the environment (such as getting up from a chair) and sends this information to the brain. This information tells the muscles what to do so they can adapt to the change and you keep your balance. When this system gets overloaded, you lose your balance. Whether you are standing still (static balance) or moving (dynamic balance), your body continually makes adjustments to keep you from falling. Although you may think that having good balance is important only for gymnasts or figure skaters, regular balance training improves posture and coordination, enhances movement and performance, and helps prevent injuries and falls.

 

Core muscles are responsible for extending, flexing, and rotating your trunk. These consist of many layers of muscle that will determine your posture. Strengthening and conditioning these muscles reduce the chances of back pain and spinal injuries, improve performance, and result in better coordination and balance. Therefore, all exercise programs should consist of a solid foundation of core work.                   

 

BODY TONE

Body toning is generally a fitness goal that many have incorrect knowledge off.  Body toning is a combination of high repetitions with little resistance and moderate rests, cardiovascular training and dieting in order to get the "tone".

 

Lets dissolve the misnomer of "tone" right now. The firming-up or toning is due to an increase in muscle tissue as well as a low enough bodyfat percentage to see the definition and shape of the muscles and get rid of the "jiggle".

Muscles do not go from soft to hard or hard to soft—they either shrink or grow in size. Muscles themselves do not "firm-up" or "tone".

There are no two ways about it—in order to achieve the look of muscle tone or a toned body you need to engage in strength training as well as shed the layer of fat covering your muscles.

Traditional resistance training alone doesn't produce the toned look desired, especially when an individual resistance trains in the fashion previously mentioned with unnecessarily high repetitions, little resistance, and little if any stress on the muscle.

Resistance training alone doesn't produce the toned look desired.

A calorie deficit also needs to be created in order to shed some of the subcutaneous body fat (fat under the skin).

Just because you are not looking to get "bulky" or add muscle mass doesn't mean that you should shy away from stressing your muscles with relatively heavy weight (women and men).

Effort needs to be given and your muscles need to be stressed in order for them to change and grow. And simply going through the motions will produce little if any results because the muscle is not being stressed enough and therefore has no reason to adapt and change its current condition.

Generally, training with a resistance that produces fatigue between 8-12 repetitions works well for most individuals. That doesn't mean that you can give up after the 8th or 12th repetition—it means that there is no way that you can get the 13th.

If you can get 13, then the resistance is not enough. Don't forget to include cardio conditioning into your fitness program in addition to your strength training

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