PATHFIT 2

2
FITNESS EXERCISE
FITNESS EXERCISE
From stronger muscles to enhanced flexibility,
improved cardiovascular health to better endurance
and lower risk of disease to boosted energy,
physical exercise offers many benefits to anyone
who engrosses in it. Regular exercise also helps in
maintaining your mental health by lessening your
anxiety, stress and inspiring your mood. Exercise
more efficiently and effectively by evaluating your
habitual usage of the nine principles of exercise.
1.Regularity:
The benefits of exercise only last when
you exercise regularly. This makes your
body to adapt to muscle stimulation.
To maintain effective results, you must
exercise persistently. Infrequent
exercise can do more harm to your
body than good. Also, you should
implement regularity in your daily
work/rest patterns and eating.
2. Overload Exercise:
To provide your body with enough motivation
to cause alteration, you must reach towards
the boundaries of your extent of movement.
That means pushing yourself to more asserting
levels whenever you exercise by increasing
resistance, repetition, duration or intensity. In
order to improve your physical fitness and
health, ensure that the amount of work you
perform during any exercise exceeds the
normal demands that you place on the body. If
you are looking for some real results, you'll
have to put on some real effort.
3. Progression:
To be efficient, your exercise routine needs to get progressively more
demanding over time. This means that both the amount and
intensity of your physical activity should be increased gradually. It is
important to maintain that all progressions are even and small in
nature to prevent overwhelming the body's ability to restore.
4. Specificity:
This principle states that human
body will comply with whatever
exercises you perform. For example,
if you only carryout bench presses,
your body will not accustom to sit-
ups. Hence, it may be beneficial for
you to alter your training accordingly.
The adaptations your body will make
are precise to the types of exercise
and stress to which it is exposed to.
5. Variety:
While selectivity is important,
variety helps to keep you excited
and engaged about your exercise
regime. Even the most perfect
exercise program will become sour
after a while. Variety allows
recovery and can reduce risk of
injury. Also, it helps to increase
your motivation and progress.
6. Adaptation:
It means that the body can adjust to
any burden as long as it is done in
small increments. The amount of
momentum the body can make
depends on consistency of workouts,
genetic makeup, adequate rest and
nutrition. Thus, adaptation results in
less muscle breakdown, improved
efficiency and less effort at that level.
7. Recovery:
Recovery periods allow your body to comply to overload. Though every
human is different, most people need at least 2 days of recovery between
strenuous workouts. While overload is crucial for prompting an adaptive
response within your body, overload without recovery can result in
diminution in fitness.
8. Periodization:
It describes the need to make long
term fitness plan if you want to work
towards fitness- related goals. Make
sure that your plan not only include
periods of high volume and high
intensity training but also periods of
rest and recovery.
9. Reversibility:
Unfortunately, fitness cannot be stored.
If you take a sustained break from your
regular workouts, your body will begin
to regress to its pre- trained state. A
short break of a week or so will have an
insignificant effect on your fitness but
lengthy breaks will result in a steady
decline of both cardiovascular fitness
and strength. To maintain persistent
fitness levels over time, you must be
rational in your training efforts.
Each principle allows us to assess some element of a
person's training. When you adopt the principles
properly, you are most likely to be successful. If you want
to improve any aspect of your physical performance, you
need to adhere to the exercise principles. These
principles can be thought of as a catalog to success.
Strength (Resistance)Training
Training that applies resistance against the force
created by a contracting (shortening) muscle. Goal is to
gradually and progressively overload the musculature
system so it gets stronger Many ways to use
gravitational forces to increase muscular tension
through a range of motion
Ways to Strength Train Machines

•Free weights
•Elastic resistance (bands, tubing, etc.)
•Body weight
•Suspension training (TRX)
•Kettlebells
•Ankle weights/hand weights
Benefits of Strength Training

•Increased strength and function in daily life

•Improved body composition
•Increased metabolic rate
•Increase bone density
•Improve GI mobility
•Decrease resting blood pressure
•Improve blood lipids
•Enhanced self confidence
•Relieve depression
•Increased strength of connective tissue
•Decreased arthritic pain
Strength training and metabolism

•Degenerative diseases associated with aging are related to loss of muscle

mass, strength (Evans Rosenberg 1992)

•The amount of muscle we have is the single biggest factor affecting metabolic
rate
•On average, lose ½ lb muscle/yr after age 30
•by age 50 thats 10 lbs. of muscle gone!
•Rate of muscle mass loss doubles after age 50. (Nelson et al. 1994)
•Muscle is metabolically active tissue it burns calories while you sleep!
FITT Principle and Strength Training
GUIDELINES FOR AEROBIC EXERCISE
. Frequency
Always consider the number of aerobic exercise sessions per week. When
doing cardio exercise, especially to lose weight, frequency is an important
factor to make it more effective. Start cardio exercise for 3 days a week for
the first few weeks, with not more than 2 days rest between sessions.
Afterwards, we can gradually increase the frequency of exercise to five
days a week.

. Intensity
To be effective, aerobic exercises should be done in moderate intensity,
that is, our heart rate should be 60 to 80% of our maximum heart rate.
Time
More time spent during aerobic exercises means more
calories burned and an increase in endurance. We can at
least do 20 minutes per session at first, then gradually increase
it to 60 minutes.

. Type
Running, jogging, sprinting, swimming and playing contact
sports such as basketball are some activities that we can do
to improve our heart rate. It is also important to try different
exercise and activities to void boredom.
1. Get the Maximum Heart Rate. .

Age: 15 RHR: 60

MHR = 220 -15

(Your age)

MHR =205
2. Determine the Heart Rate Reserve.

(HRR = MHR) HRR = 205 - 60

(Resting Heart Rate)
(*Please refer to Self-testing activities)

HRR= 145
3. Take 60% and 80% of the HRR
a. 60% x HRR = _________ 60% x 145 = 87
b. 80% x HRR = _________ 80% x 145 = 116

4. Add each HRR to Resting Heart Rate (RHR) to obtain the Target Heart
Rate (THR) range.
a. 60% HRR 87 + __60___ = __147__ beats per minute
(RHR)
b. 80% HRR 116 + __60__ = __176 __ beats per minute
(RHR)
Therefore, your target heart rate range is 147 to 176 beats per minute.
Isotonic Resistance Training

• Isotonic resistance training is the most common form of

strength training which uses free weights such as dumbbells and
barbells.
• It is said to occurs when through out the range of movement the
weight remains constant.
Isotonic Contractions

Muscle length is said to change during both;

• Concentric Contractions
• Eccentric Contractions
Concentric Contractions
Isotonic concentric contractions
causes shortening in muscle length.
Concentric contractions are evident
when an individual is moving
against the resistance or weight.
• Athlete moves the weight or
resistance in the same
direction to which they are
moving. They then pull the
weight down faster than it
would naturally move with
gravity
Eccentric Contractions
Isotonic eccentric contractions see the
lengthening of muscles occur. Eccentric
contractions are evident when an
athlete moves in the same direction as
the weight or resistance. The passage is
then slowed so that movement is slower
than it naturally would with gravity.
Sports
Isotonic resistance training is used in the following
sports;
• Javelin
• Squash
• Basketball
• Rock climbing
• 50m butterfly
Advantages & Disadvantages
Advantages include;
• Easy to do
• Overload is easy to administer
• Cheap
• Can imitate movements specific to a sport

Disadvantages include;
• Poor technique can lead to injury
• Fatigue occurs
• Cannot create the same tension within a muscle
Isometric Resistance Training
• Isometric resistance training involve muscular actions in which
the length of the muscle does not change and there is no
visible movement at the joint.
• They occur against an immovable resistance.
Isometric Exercises
Isometric exercises may be completed with sub maximal muscle action. For
instance full body exercises that involve sub maximal contractions include;
Advantages & Disadvantages

Advantages include;
• Cheap, uses no expensive equipment
• Relatively few injuries occur in this method
• Specific muscle weaknesses can be developed

Disadvantages include;

• Develops strengths at one angle only

Isokinetic Resistance Training
• Isokinetic resistance training is the
newest form of resistance training.
Isokinetic resistance training allows a
person to operate at a constant speed
against a weight or resistance.

• This method uses machinery designed

to develop strength through a full
range of motion.
Advantages & Disadvantages

Advantages include;
• Resistance can be easily altered
• Develops strength through a full range of motion
• Strength is developed relatively safely

Disadvantages include;
• Machines are expensive
• Does not develop ligament and tendon strength as much as isotonic
training because the machine provides the stability of the resistance
• Injury may occur with inexperienced individuals