Fitness for Enhancing your physical and mental strength

PHYSICAL Fitness

Physical fitness is a general term we come across quite often and use it to describe an individual's ability to carry out a variety of physical tasks without feeling fatigued. It enables us to perform up to our potential and capabilities.

According to W.H.O. (1994) 

"Fitness is the ability to perform muscular work satisfactorily".

According to Davis, Bull, Roscoe, and Roscoe (1994), Physical fitness is "the ability to carry out our daily tasks without undue fatigue".

Lamb (1984) defines "Physical fitness is the capacity to meet successfully the present and potential physical challenges of life".

Rusby (2001) also states that physical fitness is "the ability to meet physical demands placed upon us, either generally in the terms of everyday life or the specific demands of a sport or physical activity".

It can be summarised as: 

physical fitness is the attainment or maintenance of physical capacities, to perform daily activities, and to confront expected and unexpected physical challenges successfully. 

It is the ability to endure, bear up, withstand stress, and carry on in circumstances where an unfit person cannot continue. 

Physical fitness involves the performance of the heart, lungs, and muscles of the body. 

Physical efforts also influence the mind, fitness affects qualities such as mental alertness and emotional stability. To put it briefly, physical fitness is a major basis for doing different tasks as well as enjoying life to its fullest.

Fitness varies from a person to person. It is influenced by age, gender, heredity, personal habits, exercise, and eating preferences. The first three factors cannot be controlled.
However, the latter three, viz: habits, exercise, and diet are within one's control to improve.

Fitness plays a vital role in any field of human endeavour and influences the efficiency of a person. For this reason, fitness consciousness has become a phenomenon all over the world. 

People from all walks of life feel that fitness is necessary for health, appearance, and job performance.

There are certain measurable parameters of fitness.

Parameters of Fitness:
Five basic components of physical fitness involve the heart, lungs, strength, endurance, and flexibility. To improve the overall fitness, an individual has to participate in specific programs to develop each one of these basic components.
There is a general impression that parameters of fitness are necessary only for athletes and individuals who hold jobs that require heavy muscular work or great appearance. However, all the components of physical fitness are important for everyone. Shopping, catching the bus, all household chores at peak hours, long working hours in the office, socializing, childbearing and rearing; fitness matters everywhere irrespective of gender and age.

There are five measurable components to ensure fitness. 

i) Cardiovascular endurance: Cardiovascular endurance, in fact, is an individual's aerobic capacity or aerobic power, which is the ability to supply oxygen to the working muscles during physical activity.

ii) Muscular strength: A person can exert force for a brief period. Upper-body strength, for example, can be measured by various weight-lifting exercises. Strength is crucial for daily activities such as sitting, walking, running, lifting and carrying objects, doing household work, etc. When you increase your strength, you are also increasing the size of muscles, as well as, strengthening connective tissues.
This, in turn, helps to avoid injuries and you are stronger and healthier. Strength is also of great value in improving personal appearance and self-image.

iii) Muscular endurance: Muscular endurance depends to a large extent on cardiovascular endurance. Weak muscles cannot repeat an action several times, nor sustain it for a prolonged period.

iv) Flexibility: This means how flexible are your joints.

v) Body composition: It refers primarily to the distribution of muscle, fat, bone, and other tissues in the body and its measurement is often considered as a component of fitness.

The above parameters of fitness are related to athletes as well as non-athletes and people of all age-groups, and are of prime importance for the health and wellness of everyone. There are a few more motor skill-related aspects of fitness which are of greater significance in sports. These include balance, coordination, reaction time, and speed. While these components are important in achieving success, in particular, in athletics, they also add up to the personality of an individual.

Mental Health

So far as mental health is concerned, it can be defined as: 

Mental health is a level of psychological well-being or an absence of mental illness. It is the "psychological state of someone who is functioning at a satisfactory level of emotional and behavioural adjustment". 

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), mental health includes "subjective well-being, perceived self-efficacy, autonomy, competence, intergenerational dependence, and self-actualization of one's intellectual and emotional potential, among others." 

The WHO further states that the well-being of an individual is encompassed in the realisation of their abilities, coping with normal stresses of life, productive work and contribution to their community.

"Fitness for Enhancing your             mental and physical strength". 

Mental health or mental fitness is as much responsible for anyone as physical fitness. 

Mental health and physical fitness, both interactively influence each other. If one is not mentally sound then there is a chance of not having a sound physic too; and if due to whatever reason he/she starts taking drugs, and in due course of time becomes addicted, his/her health is bound to suffer. For enhancing one's physical and mental capability and efficiency, one has to have sound health of both i. e.  mind and body. In other words, holistic health is necessary for optimum performance. 

A nutritious diet for having good health is equally important. However, in addition to a nutritious diet, physical exercises as well as kinds of stuff such as Pranayam and Meditation, which are responsible for mental well being, are too of great importance. 

You can achieve holistic health by practicing yoga. 

Yogic practices such as asanas, pranayamas, and meditation if done in right combination can provide physical fitness, mental calmness, and emotional well being. 

Asanas would bring flexibility and balance to the body. 

Pranayamas would help into free-flowing of the life force energy, thus adding up to physical as well as mental health. 

Finally, the meditation will bring calmness to mind assuring the emotional well being. 

This way an individual will be holistically healthy and he/she would be able to give his/her 100 percent. There is no reason that a CEO or any organisational head would not be happy to have such healthy employees for his/her company/organisation.

God blessings!

Shashank Shekhar