Inspired by a vlog by lukestokes and the start of winstonwolfe’s fitness journey I decided I would do a post on fitness.

I hope I don’t offend anybody here in saying that I would bet the majority of the steemit community could be in better shape. Maybe I’m wrong and I’m just setting myself up for the dreaded flag.

I TAKE IT BACK!!

I’m basing that on my assumption that a lot of people here spend a lot of time sat at their computers maybe both at home and at work. Anyway if you are somebody who thinks they could be in better shape (and let’s face it, even slim people could be fitter) then I’d like to provide some support to any steemit fitness-phobes out there!

First let’s get a little educated

Being physically fit means being able to go about your daily tasks while still sustaining enough energy to outrun a dinosaur if one were to suddenly appear.

Components of Physical Fitness

The word fit is a broad concept so let’s look at the different aspects of fitness to be aware of so we can improve on our weaknesses.

• Cardio
• Endurance
• Strength
• Flexibility
• Body fat %
• Metabolic
• Skills

Why so many?!

We all have weaknesses. Even athletes. Rather than just throw yourself into any old painful program you might want to consider what areas here need the most work and number them in order of priority. I’m not going to tell you what’s a healthy level, I’d prefer to let you decide but I advise you to test yourself on these things and consider how important it is for you to improve on that particular fitness component.

Cardio

How strong is your heart? How strong are your lungs?
You could go for a quick run around the block to find out!

Your cardio fitness is your body’s ability to deliver oxygen to your working muscles fast enough to keep them going. Lots of people say they hate cardio. And I totally get that, as cardio is my greatest weakness. But when you consider the importance of a healthy heart I’m sure most of you will have this high on your priority list.

Endurance

How long can you lift for? Let’s use your body weight to test this.

We’ll go through each muscle group to give yourself an idea of your strength for holding just your body weight.

Let’s start with your legs

This is an easy one! You carry yourself with your legs all the time!
So here’s what I want you to try.

If after 3 sets of 12 reps you can still keep going to do more than 20 then this is too easy

Next let’s try your chest

This is a little harder but I’m sure you can do it.

If after 3 sets of 8 reps you can still keep going to do more than 16 then you should make it harder

Now the back

This one people find the most difficult. But hey, if you’re ever clinging for dear life at the edge of a building it would be pretty cool to be able to pull yourself up.

If after 3 sets of 6 reps you can still keep going to do more than 12 you can make this harder

Finally the core

Ah the beloved plank! I could do these all day!! But I won’t torture you with that.

You should also test your sides as they often get left behind leaving your core unbalanced!

When you can plank for more than 60 seconds I’ll be doing a tutorial to really kill your core!!

Phew!!

So you probably found some of those much easier than others. If you found it easy then you can probably start working those muscles with some extra weights. If you found it hard then

Keep working on it!

• If you found the press ups from the bench hard there are two ways to make these easier.
  You could use something higher than the bench, or you could do the modified push up from the ground. But if you’re well able to do one without the bench then do that!
  
• The hardest is probably the pull up and I can understand why a lot of people prefer to neglect this muscle group. But your back is incredibly important and as you get stronger I think this should move up on your priorities. I plan on writing more about the importance of a healthy back and posture. To help you with your pull ups you can make your weight lighter by using a resistance band (or even a training partner) to help pull you up.
  

It’s not cheating, it’s training!

Strength

If you found your body weight too easy for any of those exercises then you might be ready to upgrade that muscle group for a heavier weight! While endurance training is about high reps and low weight, strength training is the other way around. High weight with low reps! For most people coming back to fitness though, it's a little early for this to be high on your priorities. Feel free to test what weight you can lift doing the following.

Lunges

Bench press

Flexibility

The simplest test for this is to try to touch your toes. If you can’t you definitely need to work on your flexibility. In fact, if you don’t work on your flexibility and you just start working out by running or weight lifting you will quickly lose flexibility and make your muscles tight! So make this high on your priority list.

Body fat %

To find out your body fat percentage you can either get assessed at your gym if you’re already a member, you could get a body fat scale, or you could forget the daunting number and just get fit without monitoring it! I generally advise people to forget the number! But some people believe that knowing their number helps motivate them.

So if you’re going to use a scales I recommend you use one that calculates your body fat percentage because frankly, your weight does NOT matter. In my opinion knowing your weight and checking it every week or less only serves to demotivate people who are trying to lose weight because these people are not taking into account the various factors that affect their weight that they just don’t have control of.

Your weight can fluctuate as much as the bitcoin exchange rate!!

So if you’re going to check your number make it your body fat percentage and don’t check it regularly because a lack of results will demotivate you. Limit it to once or MAX twice a month!

Also please don’t be hard on yourself! So many people believe that weight is totally in our control and if we are overweight or not losing weight it is our own faults. But you cannot control your weight any better than you can control the actions of another person. You can certainly manipulate your weight and create an environment in which it is more likely to lose weight, but your metabolism is far too complex a system for you to consciously control. Which brings me to our next component

Metabolic

Your metabolic fitness is as difficult to control as your weight. If you could control your weight then tomorrow your gut would be nothing but a memory. Similarly with metabolism, you can’t just consciously control your blood pressure, blood sugar levels and digestive system. Metabolism is a complex system I’d like to delve into tomorrow in a post about why losing weight too fast can be bad for you. For now, just know that as long as you focus on the other components, as well as eating healthy, your body fat and your metabolism will sort themselves out! If you think your diet needs some adjustment then decide where nutrition should be on the list because at some stage on your fitness journey your diet will need to be addressed.

Skills

The final fitness component can be further broken down into skills that relate to fitness. These include

• Speed_________________eg for a race or marathon
• Agility_________________eg for team sports like soccer etc
• Power_________________eg for kicking, punching or power lifting
• Co-ordination___________eg for racquet sports like tennis
• Reaction time___________eg for racquet sports or marshall arts
• Balance________________eg for yoga, dancing, gymnastics

I don’t expect you to test yourself on all or even any of these, but the reason I include it here is because I think it’s important for people to consider what you can use your fitness for.

It’s not just so we can fail at trying to live forever you know!

Personally I feel great being fit and healthy, but I wouldn’t find it easy to motivate myself if I hadn’t found a sport that I love! I train in aerial arts and all the training that I hate doing, I do it because I know it will help me achieve what I want to in the training that I love.

So that was probably a lot to take in on one post.
Take what you need from it.
Consider where your priorities should be.

And the most important thing I want you to take from this is

Find something you love!!

You don’t have to find it today or tomorrow, but just stop looking at fitness as an aesthetic goal and consider the exciting life that fitness can bring you whether that be rock climbing, surfing, dancing or cage fighting!

Summary

So even though I told you to organise your priority list by your own standards, I also contradicted myself and decided to tell you what should be high on the list and what should be low.

So here's a reminder:

• Your metabolic fitness and body fat percentage should be low on your list because once you start your fitness journey they should look after themselves, and they have been proven to be demotivating when you feel like you're not losing weight fast enough (which is actually a good thing and I'll explain that tomorrow)
• Your skills and your strength are things that you will more likely want to progress to later on in your fitness journey but in the early stages it would be like putting the cart before the horse... or the steemit platform before the blockchain!
• Because the health of your heart is important Cardio should be on the top of your priorities however I should mention that for people trying to lose weight it would be better to start with muscle endurance. The reason for this is because running and other exercises that bring your heart rate high, actually aren’t the best choice for weight loss and I’d like to further explain this in another post I’ll be writing about why walking is the best way to lose weight.
• FLEXIBILITY should be up there second to whatever you put at the top because if you don't stretch on your fitness journey then the whole thing is pointless because instead of getting frail and fat you'll just get stiff and the whole point of being fit is to feel good and be able to move!

This was just a test to give you an idea of your fitness level. Whatever your weaknesses are, there are lots of ways to train them and I will be coming back with posts on how to train them all!

So if you're setting off on a fitness journey please let me know in the comments and I'd love to follow you :)