Start by understanding the four components of "total fitness"

1. Cardiorespiratory Fitness: Sometimes referred to as aerobic capacity. It is attained by increasing your ability to efficiently transport oxygen and nutrients to working muscles.

2. Muscular Strength and Endurance Fitness: Training your muscles to efficiently transform chemical energy into mechanical energy and help rid themselves of waste products.

3. Flexibility Fitness: Conditioning muscles, tendons, and ligaments to allow joints to be moved normally thought their entire range of motion.

4. Optimum Body Composition: This represents the proportions of fat tissue weight and lean body mass (muscle, bones and other non-fat tissue) in your body.

Body Composition Chart (Adult Recommendations)

Men - % Fat 15 - 18,  % Lean 85 - 82

Women - % Fat 22 - 26, % Lean78 - 74

 
The "Training Effect": Progressive Overload and Improvement

Vigorous exercise stresses the body so that it adapts and improves. It responds to this stress of exercise with certain predictable and identifiable changes in the body's physical and psychological make-up. The phenomenon of stress adaptation is called "the training effect" and is the basis of any successful fitness programme.

The training effect is marvellously simple in principle: Ask the body to do more, and it will, within reason, respond. Overload whichever part of the body you want to improve - overload it progressively - and it will develop increased capacity and efficiency.

Let's take the heart as an example. The heart is a muscle and train that muscle as you would any other, with work. Unlike other muscles, however, the heart cannot exercise directly, only indirectly through the exercising of other muscles in the body. The training goal: increased stroke volume. With regular exercise the heart will pump more blood with each stroke (increased stroke volume) which then allows the heart to slow down, reducing stress. Your resting pulse rate is reduced. This paradox is a perfect example of the training effect in action: you give the heart more rest by working it harder.


The Training Effect: Aerobic Improvement

Your workout frequently, intensity and duration must reach a certain level before you notice the difference the "training effect" makes. It is at this time that you will begin to "feel" like you are getting in better shape. The rule of thumb: You will notice the "training effect" when you are burning over 2,000 calories per week by exercising.

This chart gives you a good idea of the approximate number of calories you are burning during some popular aerobic exercises. Here are the average calories spent per hour by a 150lb person (A lighter person burns fewer calories; a heavier person burns more). Source. The American Heart Association.

CIRCUIT
Weight Training 700 cals Bicycling 6mph 240 cals
Bicycling 12mph 410 cals Cross-Country skiing per hour 700 cals
Jogging 5?mph 740 cals Jogging 7mph 920 cals
Jumping rope per hour 750 cals Rowing (moderate) 600 cals
Running in place per hour 650 cals Running 10mph 1,280 cals
Swimming 25 yds/min. for an hours 275 cals Swimming 50 yds/min. for an hour 500 cals
Tennis-singles per hour 400 cals Walking 2 mph 240 cals
Walking 3 mph 320 cals Walking 4 ?mph 440 cals

The calories spent in a particular activity vary in proportion to one's body weight. For example, for a 100lb person, reduce the calories by 1/3; for a 200lb person, multiply by 11/3.

When your cardiorespiratory system becomes more efficient, good things happen.

Your resting pulse rate slows down. The heart has more time to rest 
because it becomes larger and stronger and pumps a greater volume of blood per stroke.

Arteries, veins and capillaries, increase in size and /or number to 
facilitate faster exchange of oxygen and nutrients into the cells and waste products out of the cells.

You will be more alert, and have more energy because the number of oxygen - carrying red blood cells - and blood volume - increases.

Aerobic exercise increases HDL cholesterol and decreases LDL cholesterol. That reduces your chances of developing atherosclerosis - a primary cause of heart attacks and strokes.

As your breathing muscles get stronger, you will intake a greater volume of air with each breath.


The Training Effect: Muscular Improvement

The most dramatic training effects occur in your skeletal muscle cells, where a myriad of metabolic processes are stressed, alerted and made more efficient.

Training increases your metabolic rate, and the amount of fat-burning enzymes in the muscles. That is good because over 90% of your calories are burned by muscle tissue.

Stronger well conditioned muscles are more efficient at oxygen/waste exchange. They push the blood and waste products back through the veins to the lungs and heart. They resist fatigue longer and make fewer demands on the heart. Note: because women have much less testosterone than men, they won't develop muscle bulk. But, well conditioned female muscle fibres become just as efficient as a male's.

You increase the number of capillaries in the muscles, helping reduce blood pressure. For example, it takes less pressure to pump blood through 100 capillaries than it does 50.

Muscular training provides strength for proper postural support, allows you to engage in work and leisure activities, and sharpen motor skills.

Bone strength and density is increased. Keep in mind that osteoporosis (brittle bones) is more a disease of inactivity and calcium deficiency than of age.

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