CHS Physical Education

Fitness Boot Camp Handout

Definition of Fitness:
Fitness: The condition of being physically fit and healthy. Being physically fit decreases the chance of injury or bodily
harm. Most importantly it can improve your quality of life.

5 Components of Fitness
1. Cardiovascular Endurance - The efficiency with which the body delivers oxygen and nutrients needed for muscular
activity and transports waste products from the cells.
• The most important part of fitness!
• Having conditioned heart and lungs that can supply the body with oxygen without stress to the heart.
• We develop it by doing Aerobic Exercise.
• In order to improve cardiovascular endurance, aerobic exercise should be performed at least 3 times per
week, 15-20 minutes each day.
• Examples of aerobic exercise-swimming, running, biking, shoveling snow and raking leaves.

2. Muscular Strength - The greatest amount of force a muscle or muscle group can exert in a single effort.
• The amount of force produced by a muscle. Needed for activities that require above normal effort.
• Having poor muscular strength will increase the chance of getting hurt when doing activities that require
above normal effort.
• To increase your muscular strength, you would perform exercises using heavier weight and do the exercise
3-6 times (see F.I.T.T. Principle).
• The muscles get stronger when they keep working past the point of fatigue. This forces the body to adapt
(muscles get used to doing something, what was hard is now easy for the muscle).
• Remember it takes time to allow your body to adapt!

3. Muscular Endurance - The ability of a muscle or muscle group to perform repeated movement with a sub-maximal
force for extended periods of times.
• The amount of force produced by a muscle over a period of time.
• This is also if the muscles are doing something over and over and over.
• Muscular endurance is also closely related to cardiovascular endurance. Why? Because in order to perform
aerobic exercises long enough (at least 15 minutes) to benefit the heart and lungs, you need muscular
endurance to be able to exercise continuously for this long.
• We improve muscular endurance by using lighter weight and do the exercise at least 15 times.

4. Flexibility - The ability to move the joints or any group of joints through an entire, normal range of motion.
• The looseness or elasticity of a muscle, which allows the joint to move through a full range of motion.
• This is the most neglected part of fitness.
• Flexibility is affected by:
i. Gender
ii. Age
iii. Size and condition of muscle
iv. Level of activity.
• Muscles should always be warmed (by cardio) before they are stretched.
• Poor flexibility increases risk of injury.

5. Body Composition - The percentage of body fat a person has in comparison to his or her total body mass.
• Lean body mass (tissue) is: muscle, bone, water & organs.
• An approximate healthy fat percentage for a male is 10-20%.
• An approximate healthy fat percentage for a female is 15-25%.
• Scale weight means nothing unless you know your percent body fat, do not be mislead by height/weight
charts, as they may be misleading.

The F.I.T.T. Principle

The FITT Principle describes how to safely apply the principles of overload and progression:
F = Frequency
I = Intensity
T = Time
T = Type (specificity)

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 CHS Physical Education
1. Frequency - The rate at which something occurs or is repeated over a particular period of time.
a. Frequency is how often a person performs the targeted health-related physical activity.
b. For each component of health-related fitness, a safe frequency is three to five times a week.

2. Intensity - The quality of being intense (i.e. how hard you are working).
a. Intensity is how hard a person exercises during a physical activity period.
b. Intensity can be measured in different ways, depending on the related health-related component. For
example, monitoring heart rate is one way to gauge intensity during aerobic endurance activities, but gives
no indication of intensity during flexibility activities

3. Time - The indefinite continued progress of existence (i.e. how long you will exercise).
a. Time is the length of the physical activity.
b. As with the other aspects of the FITT principle, time varies depending on the health-related fitness
component targeted.
c. For example, flexibility or stretching may take 10-30 seconds for each stretch, while the minimum time for
performing aerobic activity is 20 minutes of continuous activity.

4. Type - Clearly defined (i.e. what exactly you will be doing).

a. Type or specificity, refers to the specific physical activity chosen to improve a component of health-related
fitness.
b. For example, an individual wishing to increase arm strength must exercise the triceps and biceps, while an
individual wishing to increase aerobic endurance needs to jog, run, swim or perform some other aerobically
challenging activity.

Relevant Fitness Vocabulary

• Aerobic Exercise – Most of our cells prefer to get their energy by using oxygen as fuel. During aerobic exercise
(lower intensity exercise) with adequate fuel and oxygen, muscle cells can contract repeatedly without fatigue.
• Anaerobic Exercise – During anaerobic or non-oxygen conditions (higher intensity exercise), muscle cells must rely
on other reactions that do not require oxygen to fuel muscle contraction. This anaerobic metabolism in the cells
produces waste molecules (lactic acid) that can impair muscle contractions. We call this deterioration in
performance fatigue.
• Fatigue – Fatigue causes you to experience added discomfort and weakening muscles. Eventually you will need to
slow down and lower your exercise intensity. Slowing down allows the muscles to once again rely solely on aerobic
metabolism and support the removal or chemical conversion of waste molecules.
• Force – Strength or energy as an attribute of physical action or movement.
• Elasticity – The condition or property of being elastic, of being able to stretch and the tendency of a body to return
to its original shape after it has been stretched or compressed.
• Lean Body Mass (Tissue) – lean body mass is comprised of everything in your body besides body fat. This includes,
but is not limited to: muscle, bone, water & organs.
• Overload – The human body is involved in a constant process of adapting to stresses or lack of stresses placed upon
it. When you stress the body in a manner it’s unaccustomed to (overload), the body will react by causing
physiological changes (adaptation) to be able to handle that stress in a better way the next time it occurs.
• Fast Twitch Muscles – Fast twitch muscles are much better at generating short bursts of strength or speed than slow
muscles, and so they fatigue more quickly.
• Slow Twitch Muscles – Slow twitch muscles fire more slowly than fast twitch fibers. Slow twitch muscle fibers are
able to fire for a longer period time before fatiguing.
• Lactic Acid – A colorless syrupy organic acid, produced in the muscle tissues during strenuous anaerobic exercise.
Lactic acid build-up is what creates soreness in the body due to overload.

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