Are You Fit Enough?

Most people want to be fit and healthy, but what does this mean? Health is relatively easy to comprehend. You are healthy if you have no medical problems and nothing that will decrease your expected life span. Some level of physical fitness is obviously tied into personal health especially when you consider factors such as strength and cardiovascular fitness correlate well with living a long life, along with enabling you to perform daily tasks. With the health part covered, how then do you determine if you are fit enough?

You can be sure that your fitness requirements differ from almost everyone else. Think about it, every athlete has different requirements even if they play the same sport. There are different positions for every sport and different ways of approaching the position based on your strengths. In daily life we all have different tasks that require some form of fitness, be it lifting something, bending down to pick things up and moving around in general. You need to decide how much strength, power, speed, aerobic endurance, mobility, flexibility etc. you require, not only to live a healthy life but to fulfill the requirements of your individual lifestyle.

Check out ExRx.net to help decide your fitness requirements and ask yourself which you have reached and which you need to start working towards. Make sure you are always fit enough for the task at hand.

Health and Fitness Standards

If you have been training for a while the desire to compare yourself and your abilities with other is probably strong. This desire for comparison and competition is fine if you have an outlet. What happens though if you train alone and don't have the opportunity to compete?

The first thing to do is compare yourself with yourself by comparing your present results with your past results. Regular benchmark session that fit in with your goals are a great idea so you can track your progress. What about how you compare with other though? Ideally you'll only be focusing on improving one or two aspects at a time so don't feel like you have to reach the top standards across all the fitness areas.

ExRx.net has a huge range of health and fitness calculators. Check them out and see how you compare. Don't be discouraged by any weaknesses you have, instead use your results to help shape your future health and fitness goals.