What is Total Fitness?
For me – Total fitness means having the ability to cover all facets of Fitness well but not necessarily be EXCELLENT at one field.
I define it as the 5 points below –
Strength & Muscle Tone – This involves predominntly weight training. Resistance training, machines, free weights etc. The focus is on getting your muscles strong and ultimately building muscle tone in those areas. Remember – Strength will ultimately come down to the individual. Are YOU getting stronger by doing this? Then that’s all that matters.
Flexibility & Mobility – Do you have sore joints – Can’t touch your toes? Then what are you doing to fix it? You need to ensure you are carrying out stretching protocols and mobility protocols too. Foam rolling and banded work and lower body mobility are all key. Google search the Limber 11 programme to find out more.
Cardiovascular Fitness – Are you out of breath walking up stairs? We don’t want that. It’s vital to participate in cardiovascular exercise weekly. My choice is long distance running. 5K’s & 10K’s are vital in order to maintain a healthy heart and have the lung capacity to carry out every day tasks without being laboured.
Functional Fitness – Are you able to jump high, do you have co-ordination and are you able to work parts of your body independantly doing all sorts of different ‘Primal based movements’? This is what I class as functionality. Think the fitness of manual labour workers.
Mental Fitness – This is achieved by continually doing more than you previously did. Pushing yourself to a level where you can do more, fight against the will to give up and come out the other side mentally stronger. This can be tested by trying to excel weekly, monthly, yearly in all the above aspects.
So do YOU have efficiency in all the above fields? If not – Get to work on it. Unless you are an athlete focusing on ONE specific field, then you should probably look at attacking the above.
It will give you a better quality of life, open your eyes to new things and allow you to be prepared for pretty much anything
Andrew