Have you ever wondered what it takes to be the best athlete you can be? Want to know where you may be falling short? Here is some information that may help you.
There are five primary components of fitness:
1 Flexibility
2 Body Composition - Fat v.s. Lean mass (closely related to diet/nutrition)
3 Muscular Strength
4 Muscular Endurance
5 Cardiovascular Endurance
Each person is born with their own strengths and weaknesses in these above areas. Knowing the five components of fitness can help you discover the areas you may need to improve upon to take your training to the next level. Does your fitness program address each of these five components?
When an individual primarily focuses on one or two components of fitness, they are likely to fall short in other areas and may not be able to reach their goals.
For example, the athlete who spends all their efforts weight training and doing cardio may find them self unable to reach their body composition goals simply due to incorrect food/caloric intake (too much or too little). The same applies to the athlete that forgets to spend time on their soft tissue health. This would include self stretching, foam rolling, massage/stretch therapy, etc. They may find them self getting tighter and lose the ability to do their exercises in the full range. The athlete may even compensate for this tightness and practice improper form which will ultimately lead to injury.
The athlete that has a healthy balance of the five components and is able to reach their goals with sustainable results for optimum health. Thanks for reading and don't forget to stretch!
-The Stretcher
Do you have a flexibility question for me? Select questions will be considered as topics in future blog posts.