For years, cardiovascular fitness was considered the epitome of what it meant to be healthy. Someone who could walk - or run - for miles was someone with a strong heart and lungs. That strong heart and lungs would help that person live a long and healthy life. “The heart is the most important muscle of the body” is something that exercise and medical professionals have extolled for years—but what about all the other muscles in the body? Aren’t they important as well? That answer is a resounding YES, and its causing exercise and medical professionals to rethink their paradigm around cardiovascular fitness being the most critical indicator of human health and functioning. Dependence of Cardiovascular System on Muscular Fitness At its most fundamental level, in order for the heart and the lungs to be stressed adequately to make functional improvement, muscles have to contract to move the body. The better those muscles are able to contract (that is, the better “fitness” the...
Posts
Showing posts with the label Strength Training
The term “muscular fitness” might conjure up images of big, bulky muscles or incredible feats of strength. While these are certainly elements of muscular fitness, they’re far from the only (and most important) aspects of muscular fitness for nearly all adults. Indeed, we use our muscles for literally everything we do and, if we do not have a well-developed muscular system, we quite literally shrivel away and die (clinically this is referred to as frailty syndrome). Since muscular fitness is critical for our survival and we know it declines with age, starting as young as 30, let’s explore the multidimensional nature of muscular fitness to better understand how it impacts clients. What is Muscular Fitness? This question is not as simple to answer as you might first think. Muscular fitness is not merely a singular capacity, but rather five distinct and yet interrelated capacities that all work together to allow the human body to function on a high level. These five capacities are:...