A Beginner's Guide to Fitness

Being physically fit is not just for athletes or enthusiasts! It's well known that there are a myriad of health benefits to be had by engaging in regular physical activity, and there are tons of people online sharing fitness information. The abundance of information might make it difficult for someone starting their fitness journey to understand what information applies to them, what doesn't, and what is blatant misinformation. My goal is to describe a straightforward approach to fitness, free of misinformation or exaggerated claims. First, I'll define fitness, its components, and the benefits of regular exercise. Next, I'll list some common goals and offer some recommendations for beginners. Last but not least I'll discuss the nature of change and how to set realistic standards for yourself.

What Is Fitness?

Fitness generally speaking is someone's ability to carry out the daily tasks associated with living and working and is made up of several different components: Cardiorespiratory Endurance, Muscular Strength, Muscular Endurance, Power, Speed/Quickness, Agility, Flexibility, Balance/Coordination, and Body Composition. Each of these components can be developed independently although many are interrelated, and, as every person has a different level of demand placed on them physically, individuals will vary in how many and the extent to which these fitness components are developed.

Fitness itself is a component of a person's overall health - being fit generally contributes to a longer health span, that being the part of a person's life spent without disease or injury. Some of the components of fitness play a larger role in health span than others. For example a person may not need to develop their max lower body power output and sprinting ability to take full advantage of the health promoting benefits of exercise; instead focusing on cardiorespiratory endurance with regular walking, biking or another activity can yield major rewards over the course of a lifetime. The components that contribute the most to a person's health are cardiorespiratory endurance, muscular strength and endurance, body composition, and balance/coordination (especially among aging populations). These four components are the main contributors to our daily tasks and activities, and they have the ability to describe how well someone can move through and interact with their environment. Ideally, every person should have enough endurance, strength and coordination so that each of their daily tasks can be completed without maximal effort. Many sedentary people do not have adequate strength or endurance and are outside their ideal body composition zone, a combination which can contribute to chronic disease and decreased quality of life. On the other hand, someone who regularly participates in exercise and practices good eating habits can maintain the functional quality of their body, preventing chronic disease and increasing their overall wellbeing and longevity.

Now we know what fitness is and how it contributes to a person's health, but how does exercise contribute to fitness? Our bodies are amazing instruments through which we can act upon the physical world, and the relationship is reciprocal: the actions we take in the environment create signals inside the body that shape and change our systems and structures. A challenging task will generate internal signals that our body needs to make some improvements in order to repeatedly meet that demand in the future. If the task is generally the same day after day, the system will receive signals to maintain its current level of fitness, with no improvements made. If the task is really easy (sitting on the couch), the body will begin deconditioning as the signals it receives, or lack there of, indicates that no change is necessary to meet a future demand. This set of rules in known as the law of adaptation - our bodies will adapt to the amount of demand placed upon it. By beginning a regular exercise program, you can start sending your body signals to make improvements to your fitness. After a few workouts, you may notice that not only the exercises performed but also daily tasks will begin to feel easier to complete, a sign that your body has began adapting to the exercise! Many people will report feeling more energetic and move with more confidence as they feel their body responding to the exercises.

Engaging in regular exercise not only benefits the physiological systems directly used (the muscles, bones, heart and lungs) but it also positively impacts the entire body. Regular aerobic activity like walking benefits the cardiovascular system as well as the metabolic system, helping to maintain healthy blood pressure, cardiac and pulmonary function, as well as supporting insulin sensitivity, glucose uptake, and healthy triglyceride levels in the blood - which makes regular aerobic exercise a key tool in preventing and treating certain metabolic conditions! Regular resistance training builds and maintains healthy skeletal muscle tissue, increases bone density and strengthens our connective tissues. Having strong bones and connective tissues is very important as we age, as conditions like osteopenia/osteoporosis and other musculoskeletal injuries can negatively affect a person's quality of life. Lastly, having a good level musculature confers an additional layer of protection from metabolic conditions: muscle cells need energy - so the more muscle cells you have, the greater the demand for energy! Both aerobic and resistance training have positive impacts on mood, alertness, self-esteem and self-confidence, as well as benefiting digestion and nutrient absorption, psychological wellbeing, and the immune system! Walking, carrying groceries or kids, performing work inside or outside the home, and playing pick up kick ball on the weekends will be much less stressful on the body, and much more enjoyable, by way of regular exercise.

Where to Begin...

There are many reasons why someone might choose to begin an exercise program - maybe you'd like to run a 5k, hike with a friend, lose a few pounds, or feel more energetic, perhaps some tasks are starting to feel more challenging than usual, or you know you'll want keep up with the new grandkid in a few years. For any of these goals, two general recommendations make excellent starting points for someone looking to improve their fitness. The third recommendation pertains to eating habits, as those will influence your body composition, which can effect your other health and fitness goals.

The first general recommendation is to increase your level of aerobic activity. A good goal is to accrue 150 total minutes each week. Walking is probably the most recommended exercise, as it is very accessible requiring no special equipment or set up, and has been prescribed as exercise since the mid-1800's as industrialized societies made sedentary lifestyles more common. If you are not very active at the moment, starting small with 10 minutes of walking each day can be enough to start improving your fitness. As the weeks go on, slowly increase the duration of the walks until you are able to walk for 30 minutes each day. Should you be unable to walk, options such as battle ropes, arm ergometers, and supersets of pushing and pulling exercises are viable ways to stimulate the cardiovascular system. Aerobic activity is a powerful tool that can be used to decrease anybody's risk of cardiovascular disease, cardiovascular incident, type 2 diabetes, several types of cancers, and Alzheimer's disease. As aerobic activity is often the most accessible form of exercise for most people and conveys many great benefits, it takes the top spot of recommendations.

The second general recommendation for the beginner is to incorporate a resistance training workout 1 to 3 times per week, prioritizing favorite exercises and focusing on using the best technique possible. Getting started with a resistance training routine can be a challenge - prioritizing your favorite exercises is a great way to increase the incentive to go train and thereby helping your stick to the new routine. Focusing on using good technique is important because it demands that less weight be used, which for the beginner is beneficial as it can reduce the resulting soreness and lower the risk of injury but still be enough stimulation to trigger muscle growth. Of course soreness is to be expected and necessary to some degree for muscle growth, but not over doing it as a beginner can set a positive tone regarding resistance training. Everyone can benefit from resistance training, from adolescents to folks wanting to age gracefully. Especially folks in their 60s, 70s and upward, resistance training can greatly improve quality of life and prevent injury.

For improving your diet, practice only one or two good eating habits at a time until you have mastered them before including a new challenge. The changes you initially implement can be quite general: eating three meals a day, including more protein at each meal, including more fruits and veggies, or skipping the sugary drinks and snacks. After a few weeks of consistency with one or two new habits, adding in a third or fourth habit can build upon your base of good eating practices. The next steps might be: estimating calorie intake, eating to achieve a certain macronutrient profile, or improving the micronutrient density and fiber content of your food. These goals can be easier to execute after the experience gained with the more general practices. Although this is a less exciting approach to changing eating patterns and body composition, it has the potential to have a lasting impact by starting with the easier habits and building upon them as time goes by. Practicing a only a few habits may not seem like enough to change your body, but if those habits are sustained, the benefit gained year after year will set a course for life long balanced eating and health.

Lets Talk Time -

Whether you want to improve your physical performance for an endurance or strength event, or change your body composition for a formal event, vacation or a turning point in life, the most important & powerful tool you can apply is consistency. That's because our bodies do not change easily, especially when it comes to body composition goals. Increasing muscle mass and/or losing body fat are time sensitive endeavors, with out the proper application of consistency both have a tendency to yield no results. Short bursts of action, whether dieting or working out, might feel beneficial but the work will ultimately be undone if nothing is maintained into the future. A fitness journey may begin because of any one thing, and important events or competitions are excellent motivation, but they should be viewed as milestones not destinations. I want to help people avoid the cliché of the "yo-yo" diet: quickly losing 10lbs for an event, only to gain it back in the weeks following. The same pattern might happen with an exercise regime as well - sticking to the plan for a few weeks, only to drop-off for a few months after missing one day or once the big vacation is through. This pattern of exercise or dieting can feel hopeless as you repeat the same process next year a few months before your next vacation/event. Instead, I want to invite a long term vision of what your life could be and how good you could feel every day through a balanced, holistic approach to eating and exercise.

If your goals involve changing your body composition by lowering your body fat percentage, a good recommendation is to lose .5 to 1 pound of bodyweight each week using the good eating practices discussed above in addition to exercise. If your goal involves an up coming event, set a realistic goal for yourself - overall you would like to lose 10 pounds, but if you only have a month until the event, losing 3 to 4 pounds is a good goal for that amount of time. In this way, the event becomes a check point for your bigger goal, rather than the entire goal itself; with the pressure off the upcoming event, you can focus on the small consistent changes to your diet and exercise that will serve you long term and you won't need drastic, unsustainable action. By maintaining the small habits that helped you lose the first 3 pounds, when the next event comes around in a few months you will have achieved your 10 pound weight loss goal and set yourself up to avoid putting it back on!

For muscle gain, the rate of change is even slower: .25 to .5 pounds each week is recommended. Muscle growth requires a calorie surplus and consistent resistance training to build the additional tissue. Training without a calorie surplus can lead to some gains in muscle tissue but will ultimately be limited by the lack of resources, and conversely a calorie surplus without training will lead to more fat being deposited around the body rather than muscles. If your goal is to add 10 pounds of muscle to your body, it could take a year of dedicated training and nutrition to achieve that result. It may seem like a daunting amount of time, but the gradual change means less individually intense workouts in favor of consistent challenges. This will be important as keeping the muscle after growing it means continuing to workout even after the goal is met.

If your goal is improved cardiovascular performance & muscular endurance, or increased muscular strength, how quickly your body makes those changes depends on a few variables - age, genetic predisposition and current physical condition. Those variable play a role in determining the speed of adaptation but the nature of progress remains the same: each week the workout duration or intensity should be raised a small amount. If training for a 5K race, this could take the form of adding a few more minutes to the training runs each week, or performing a certain distance at a faster rate. Both methods make the heart, lungs, and muscles involved work a little harder each week, keeping the system in a challenged state and bringing about improvements. If you are training to increase your strength, for example, to perform a deadlift with 135 pounds, begin with a weight that you allows you to use good technique for the workout. So perhaps you can deadlift 75 pounds with good technique, each week, add 5 pounds to the exercise and execute with the same technique. Within 12 weeks, your deadlift strength will advance to allow you to life 135 pounds without sacrificing your technique and risking an injury. Twelve weeks may seem like a long time to train, but over the course of a life time it is a very small trade-off for the benefits the strength will bring.

Lastly, don't give up if you've missed a few of your eating goals or workouts. Because there is a lot of time ahead of you to work on these goals, should you 'mess up', just pick up where you left off. There will be more times in the future when you will not be able to eat exactly how you would plan, or hit every workout as you would like, but by practicing small goals and habits week after week, the moments off plan have much less impact on your fitness. Pursuing health and fitness is a practice and the more time you allow yourself the greater the results will be.