Fitness Building Blocks for the Complete Individual

What is fitness? That is a question that could be answered a million different ways depending on who you talk to. Every sport or physical occupation has these set parameters that determine the things that need to be done to be successful. I don’t know of many ballet dancers who can pull a fire engine 100 yards. On the other hand, I’ll bet that there are very few athletes who compete in the World’s Strongest Man or Woman competition who are finishing the Boston Marathon under 3 hours.

Again, anyone reading this will have varying opinions on who the fit one is in the above examples. Well…have you figured it out? All of the athletes in the example are fit.

The dancer needs to be flexible as well as have a certain amount of endurance to perform a choreographed routine. He or she needs to also have strength to manipulate his body to perform balance poses.  The dancer in this picture is displaying great flexibility, strength, and complete body awareness.

The strongman on the other hand has to overcome massive SUPER HEAVY objects such as boulders, anvils, and the above mentioned fire truck. He must then transport these object over hundreds of meters while at the same time racing the clock. Sounds impossible eh?…It is very difficult.   World champion Phil Pfister has a different idea about taking the car for a spin.  This is an activity that is not for the faint of heart.

World Champion Phil Pfister Knows Something About Strength

Running is one of those activities that we all have a love hate relationship with.  Personally, I don’t think running should be done without some sort of ball involved, but I digress.  This is the activity that 90% of everyone associates with being fit. It is a demanding activity and while it is important, it is only one piece of the pie in a comprehensive fitness program. One reason that running is at the front of the line when talking about fitness is that it is easy to do. Running is one of those rudimentary skills that we all just sort of did when we were kids. You just put one foot in front of the other really fast. The novice would think that there is not much to it…not much to learn. Running is actually a skill that does also take some coaching to do efficiently and well.

Try keeping up with World Class Runner Bernard Lagat  for a mile.

World Champion Bernard Lagat

So what does this mean for You? You, the complete individual who wants to have no B.S. fitness. It only means that you need to have a complete fitness “pie”

Fitness, according to Professor Mel Siff,  is the ability of the individual to cope with the demands of a specific activity efficiently and safely.  It actually includes many different qualities such as:

• strength
• cardiovascular endurance
• flexibility
• local muscle endurance
• speed

For you to achieve this sort of fitness, you need planning and proper preparation. You shouldn’t go at the task without proper planning. To prepare for the task ahead, you need to accomplish a few things:

1. You need to prepare physically
2. You need to learn some skills i.e. new exercises & drills
3. You need to WANT to do this mentally
4. You need to let your body recover
5. …you need proper NUTRITION

If you are able to put all of these things into action, you will be on your way to a complete fitness program.
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