In this guide, you’ll find a comprehensive overview of what constitutes total fitness. The emphasis is that total fitness is not just about physical well-being, but also includes other aspects such as mental and emotional fitness, nutritional fitness, social fitness, and spiritual fitness.
You’ll learn that physical fitness involves achieving a balance of five components: muscular strength, muscular endurance, cardio-respiratory fitness, flexibility, and motor skills. Medical fitness refers to being free from illness and disease and making healthy lifestyle choices.
Mental and emotional fitness is about your ability to think clearly and constructively, and to deal mentally and emotionally with all aspects of life. Nutritional fitness involves maintaining a balanced diet to fuel your body and sustain physical activity and bodily functions.
Social fitness is about establishing and maintaining relationships, and being able to interact with other people. Spiritual fitness involves being aware of your belief systems and managing them to make positive decisions for yourself, others, and society.
Total fitness is about feeling good about yourself and improving your lifestyle.
As instructors, our aim should be to encourage individuals to work towards total fitness. It is available to everyone, regardless of shape. size, age or any other factor.
Total fitness is about feeling good about ourselves. In addition to the five components of physical fitness that we’ve already explored, total fitness includes the following:
- Physical Fitness: Achieving on overall balance of the five components: muscular strength, muscular endurance, cardio-respiratory fitness, flexibility and motor skills. Balancing these components aims to give an individual an “improved quality of life”
- Medical Fitness: Refers to being free from illness and disease and making healthy lifestyle choices that enable us to function optimally without the need of medicines or drugs.
- Mental and Emotional Fitness: Refers to our “state of mind”: our ability to think clearly and constructively, and to deal mentally and emotionally with all aspects of life. It is about being able to express ourselves assertively whilst showing respect for others’ opinions. We may encounter many dilemmas and our feelings will be challenged in a range of different situations. Positive approaches can help us manage difficulties.
- Nutritional Fitness: The body is like a machine, and like any other machine it needs fuel to function well. In this case a balance of the basic nutrients, i.e. carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals and water. It is important to establish regular healthy eating patterns in order to ensure an adequate supply of nutrients to sustain physical activity and bodily functions.
- Social Fitness: This is about establishing and maintaining relationships, and being able to interact with other people.
- Spiritual Fitness: is the awareness of our belief systems these may evolve from family, cultural, social and/or religious perspectives. Spiritual awareness gives us the ability to manage these to make positive decisions for self, others and society.
- Health Related Fitness places the emphasis on “Improving Lifestyle”. This means that the emphasis is on activity, improving health and preventing disease, thus enabling an individual to perform daily tasks with vigour.
Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity (WHO 1946)
Cardiovascular fitness, muscular strength, muscular endurance and flexibility all belong to the health related components of physical fitness. Each component has a direct relationship to health and overall well-being (total fitness). e.g. good levels of CV fitness can help decrease the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure as well as helping us look and feel good.
These can all help improve self esteem and manage the stresses of every day life.
When design exercise programmes for individuals, it is important to consider all components of both physical fitness and total fitness.
Clients will differ in so many ways e.g. shape, fitness levels, confidence, self esteem etc.
To ensure clients get the most from their exercise programmes, an individualised approach must always be adhered to.
