Fitness

The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Fitness

Living a healthy lifestyle is all about taking care of your mind and body. Fitness is a crucial part of this equation, and creating a personalized fitness plan is the first step to achieving your health and wellness goals. This guide will walk you through everything you need to know to craft a fitness plan that fits your unique needs and preferences.

What is Fitness?

In essence, fitness is the ability to perform physical activities with ease and endurance. When planning a well-rounded workout routine, it is important to understand the five components of physical fitness and how your training affects them. It encompasses several components, including:

• Cardiovascular endurance: This refers to your body’s ability to deliver oxygen to your muscles during physical activity.
• Muscular strength: This is the ability of your muscles to exert force.
• Muscular endurance: This is the ability of your muscles to sustain repeated movements.
• Flexibility: This is the range of motion in your joints.
• Body composition: This refers to the ratio of muscle mass to fat mass in your body.

FIn short, fitness means being physically healthy and fit. When we go into a little detail, we see that it includes concepts such as muscle strength, muscular endurance, body composition. Of course, it also includes features that are not limited to these. For example, mental health is one of them. A well-rounded fitness plan incorporates exercises that target all of these components to create a holistic approach to improving your overall health and well-being.

WHAT’S THE GOAL OF THE Fitness PLAN?

Many goals such as losing weight, gaining weight, creating a fit body, getting stronger, being durable will help you create your fitness workouts.

1. Set a Goal
2. Choose exercises suitable for the target
3. Choose Your Sets and Reps.
4. Plan your workout

Setting SMART Fitness Goals

The foundation of any successful fitness plan is setting clear and achievable goals. SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. Here’s how to apply the SMART criteria to your fitness goals:

• Specific: Instead of a vague goal of “getting in shape,” aim for something more concrete, like “increasing my cardio endurance by running for 30 minutes three times a week.”
• Measurable: Define how you will track your progress. For example, you could use a heart rate monitor to track your cardio endurance or a weight scale to monitor your body composition.
• Attainable: Set goals that are challenging but achievable based on your current fitness level.
• Relevant: Make sure your goals align with your overall health and wellness aspirations.
• Time-bound: Establish a timeframe for achieving your goals. This will help you stay motivated and on track.

How to Create Fitness Plan

The first thing to consider is the goal of the training plan. If you want to lose weight, you must create a calorie deficit. In this case, you will need more cardio exercises and weight training.

If you want to train not for athletic performance but to be healthy and fit, walking, jogging, jumping rope, cycling, swimming, and various home exercises are all effective at keeping you fit. However, if you want to plan training for athletic performance, it is necessary to choose exercises according to the branch you are doing.

For example, if you’re a marathoner, you need strong leg muscles. At the same time, your upper body muscles will remain weak as your leg muscles are constantly working. Targeting upper body and lower body exercises with functional movements in order to strengthen at an optimum level will benefit you in the fitness plan you will create.

Setting your goals makes your exercise choice easier, helps you determine the right number of sets and repetitions, and provides convenience for the fitness plan you will create.

Exercise Selection for Fitness Plan

There’s a vast array of exercises to incorporate into your fitness plan. Here are some of the most common types:

1. Aerobic Exercises

Cardio is also considered aerobic exercise, meaning it demands elevated oxygen flow, which causes you to breathe harder. Aerobic exercises are effective for weight loss, fitness and cardiovascular endurance.

Cardio can be a steady-state, low- to moderate-intensity exercise, or intervals of high intensity. It just needs to tax the large muscle groups strenuously enough and long enough to get you breathing heavily—which means you’re challenging your heart and lungs.

Examples of Aerobic Exercise

Any kind of physical activity that makes your heart rate go up is considered cardio. So, if an exercise gets your heart rate up for a while, it’s cardio exercise.  If you want to see more aerobic exercises, select the “Cardio” category in the exercise list.

Creating a Cardio Plan

Cardio exercise doesn’t have to take place in a gym. Many activities in our daily lives can provide cardio exercise, like taking the stairs, raking leaves or shoveling snow. Aim for at least 2-3 cardio workouts per week—a 10-15-minute high-intensity workout or an hourlong low-intensity activity.

2. Weight Training

Weight training is an organized exercise in which muscles of the body are forced to contract under tension using weights, body weight or resistance bands in order to stimulate growth, power, strength, and endurance. Weight training is also called “resistance training” or “strength training.”

Weight Training Exercise Selection

Beginners to Strength Training;

• As exercises become easier, increase the weight or do another set.
• Muscle-strengthening activities should be performed on 2 or more days per week. (leave 1 or 2 days rest between each strength session).
• Muscle-strengthening activities do not count toward the aerobic activity total.
• All major muscle groups should be worked. These are the legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest, shoulders, and arms.
• Examples: Lifting weights, working with resistance bands, or doing exercises that use body weight for resistance (e.g., push-ups, pull-up, sit-ups, etc.).

Muscle strengthening exercises should be done in accordance with their purpose. For example, muscle strengthening training to be done after injury and muscle strengthening training to be done for sports performance are not the same thing. Your muscle strengthening exercises to be applied after an injury should be determined by the doctor.

Muscle Strengthening Exercises can be used to build body or strengthen a particular muscle group.

Advanced Strength Training – Sample Program Stronglifts 5×5 Program

MUSCULAR POWER TRAINING

For an athlete, power refers to his ability to generate force quickly. Many team sports require athletes to be agile and be able to execute quick maneuvers.

Strength may simply be explained as the ability to generate maximum force at aparticular speed over a specific range of motion, while power is the ability to generatestrength very quickly. The goal is to move a load at high velocity (speed). Muscular power is the highest power output attainable during a particular movement, and is required in activities of daily living, sport, and work.

For optimal improvements in muscular power, a light load of 0 to 60% of 1RM should be used for 3-6 repetitions over one to three sets per exercise

Recommended intensity, frequency, set and rep range for MAXIMAL POWER

Training for Muscular Endurance

Muscle endurance refers to the ability of a given muscle or group of muscles to exert force, consistently and repetitively, over a period of time. The way to increase muscle endurance is to train with light weights, working in the 20–25 rep range. Working with lighter weight will train the muscle fibers needed for muscular endurance, and the higher rep range leads to a longer period of training.

Many sports require an overlapping ability of all three types of muscular endurance.

Recommended intensity, frequency, set and rep range for Muscular endurance.

3. Flexibility

First, a couple definitions: flexibility is the ability of a muscle to stretch and mobility is the ability of a joint to move freely through its range of motion. Both are important parts of overall fitness, and both should be incorporated into your fitness routine.

WARMING UP AND STRETCHING Warm-up helps prepare your body for aerobic activity. Because the main purpose of warming is to prepare your whole body for training. With a proper warm up exercise and stretching routine the elasticity and flexibility of the tendons and ligaments are increased. Warm-up and stretching is an activity that does not take much time, even a 5-10 minute warming routine will help you avoid injury.

Dynamic stretching consists of active movements. It is usually done before a workout to help warm up your muscles and increase your heart rate. Move slowly, stop and repeat, dig a little deeper each time and improve your range of motion. Pre-workout dynamic stretching improves circulation, prepares your muscles for movement, and temporarily increases your range of motion.

Static stretching, more commonly done at the end of a workout when your muscles are warm, is when stretches are held in place for a certain period of time, not moving. Static stretching is the most effective form of stretching for loosening up your muscles, joints, ligaments, and tendons, while also improving flexibility and range of motion. Static stretching requires you to move a muscle to the end of its range of motion and maintain this position for 20 to 45 seconds. Repeat this 2 to 3 times each.

• Each time you perform aerobic or strength-training activities, take an extra 10 minutes to stretch the major muscle groups.
• Hold stretches for at least 10 to 30 seconds and repeat each stretch 2 to 3 times

Frequently Asked Questions for Fitness

How much weight should I lift to gain muscle?

For beginners, 1 to 3 sets of 6 to 12 repetitions per exercise with a moderate load (60% to 85% of one-rep max) is ideal. More advanced individuals looking to further develop muscle mass can perform 3 to 6 sets of 8 to 12 repetitions at 70% to 85% of one-rep max.

HOW MANY SETS AND REPS SHOULD I DO?

Different training organizations, such as the American Council on Exercise (ACE) or the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM), have slightly different models for each training goal. But they follow the same general guidelines.

What is PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD

What is Progressive Overload; It is a working principle that involves gradually increasing the weight of your exercise over time so that you can continuously gain muscle, strength and endurance. It’s the gradual increase in strength by adding small weight plates every training session.

When you do intense weight training, your muscle fibers are subject to injury or stress. When your muscles are damaged in this way, satellite cells outside the muscle fibers come into play. The repair process involves rejoining the torn muscle fibers and introducing new proteins into each muscle cell. They try to repair the damage by bringing them together, as a result, they grow and strengthen the muscle fiber against this weight resistance.

Nutrition for Fitness

The training methods given here are only part of achieving your fitness goals. The truth is, nutrition is the most important part of this business, and the links below will guide you to learn how to manage calories.

https://fitnessprogramer.com/nutrition-tip/sport-nutrition/

Understanding Energy and Calories for Weight Loss

Not: The purpose of this article is to provide information about fitness and more advanced training methods, sample training plans are just for you to get an idea of, and it does not promise definitive results to anyone. Each person’s body structure, metabolism, lifestyle and goals are different, it is recommended to consult a personal trainer for best results.

Source:

• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27102172/
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7447706/
• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49282510_Methods_to_Increase_the_Effectiveness_of_Maximal_Power_Training_for_the_Upper_Body
• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323572824_Resistance_Training_Methods_to_Develop_Maximum_Strength_Power_and_Hypertrophy
• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235653976_Progression_models_in_resistance_training_for_healthy_adults_ACSM_position_stand
• https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Manipulating-Resistance-Training-Program-Variables-Tan/930ab121b1b46776ffde3858979c747bd8f8ae93