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Significance of Physical Fitness

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Benefits of Physical Activity

Obesity and Excess Weight Increase Risk of Severe Illness; Racial and Ethnic Disparities Persist

Food Assistance and Food Systems Resources

Immediate Benefits

Weight management, reduce your health risk, strengthen your bones and muscles, improve your ability to do daily activities and prevent falls, increase your chances of living longer, manage chronic health conditions & disabilities.

Regular physical activity is one of the most important things you can do for your health. Being physically active can improve your brain health , help manage weight , reduce the risk of disease , strengthen bones and muscles , and improve your ability to do everyday activities .

Adults who sit less and do any amount of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity gain some health benefits. Only a few lifestyle choices have as large an impact on your health as physical activity.

Everyone can experience the health benefits of physical activity – age, abilities, ethnicity, shape, or size do not matter.

Some benefits of physical activity on brain health [PDF-14.4MB] happen right after a session of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Benefits include improved thinking or cognition for children 6 to 13 years of age and reduced short-term feelings of anxiety for adults. Regular physical activity can help keep your thinking, learning, and judgment skills sharp as you age. It can also reduce your risk of depression and anxiety and help you sleep better.

Both eating patterns and physical activity routines play a critical role in weight management. You gain weight when you consume more calories through eating and drinking than the amount of calories you burn , including those burned during physical activity.

To maintain your weight:  Work your way up to 150 minutes a week of moderate physical activity, which could include dancing or yard work. You could achieve the goal of 150 minutes a week with 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week.

People vary greatly in how much physical activity they need for weight management. You may need to be more active than others to reach or maintain a healthy weight.

To lose weight and keep it off: You will need a high amount of physical activity unless you also adjust your eating patterns and reduce the amount of calories you’re eating and drinking. Getting to and staying at a healthy weight requires both regular physical activity and healthy eating.

See more information about:

• Getting started with weight loss .
• Getting started with physical activity .
• Improving your eating patterns .

Learn more about the health benefits of physical activity  for children, adults, and adults age 65 and older.

See these tips  on getting started.

The good news [PDF-14.5MB]  is that  moderate physical activity , such as brisk walking, is generally  safe for most people .

Cardiovascular Disease

Heart disease and stroke are two leading causes of death in the United States. Getting at least 150 minutes a week of moderate physical activity can put you at a lower risk for these diseases. You can reduce your risk even further with more physical activity. Regular physical activity can also lower your blood pressure and improve your cholesterol levels.

Type 2 Diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome

Regular physical activity can reduce your risk of developing type 2 diabetes  and metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is some combination of too much fat around the waist, high blood pressure, low high-density lipoproteins (HDL) cholesterol, high triglycerides, or high blood sugar. People start to see benefits at levels from physical activity even without meeting the recommendations for 150 minutes a week of moderate physical activity. Additional amounts of physical activity seem to lower risk even more.

Infectious Diseases

Physical activity may help reduce the risk of serious outcomes from infectious diseases, including COVID-19, the flu, and pneumonia. For example:

• People who do little or no physical activity are more likely to get very sick from COVID-19 than those who are physically active. A CDC systematic review [PDF-931KB] found that physical activity is associated with a decrease in COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths, while inactivity increases that risk.
• People who are more active may be less likely to die from flu or pneumonia. A CDC study found that adults who meet the aerobic and muscle-strengthening physical activity guidelines are about half as likely to die from flu and pneumonia as adults who meet neither guideline.

Some Cancers

Being physically active lowers your risk for developing several common cancers .  Adults who participate in greater amounts of physical activity have reduced risks of developing cancers of the:

• Colon (proximal and distal)
• Endometrium
• Esophagus (adenocarcinoma)
• Stomach (cardia and non-cardia adenocarcinoma)

If you are a cancer survivor, getting regular physical activity  not only helps give you a better quality of life, but also improves your physical fitness.

Learn more about Physical Activity and Cancer

As you age, it’s important to protect your bones, joints, and muscles – they support your body and help you move. Keeping bones, joints, and muscles healthy can help ensure that you’re able to do your daily activities and be physically active.

Muscle-strengthening activities like lifting weights can help you increase or maintain your muscle mass and strength. This is important for older adults who experience reduced muscle mass and muscle strength with aging. Slowly increasing the amount of weight and number of repetitions you do as part of muscle strengthening activities will give you even more benefits, no matter your age.

Everyday activities include climbing stairs, grocery shopping, or playing with your grandchildren. Being unable to do everyday activities is called a functional limitation. Physically active middle-aged or older adults have a lower risk of functional limitations than people who are inactive.

For older adults, doing a variety of physical activity improves physical function and decreases the risk of falls or injury from a fall . Include physical activities such as aerobic, muscle strengthening, and balance training. Multicomponent physical activity can be done at home or in a community setting as part of a structured program.

Hip fracture is a serious health condition that can result from a fall. Breaking a hip have life-changing negative effects, especially if you’re an older adult. Physically active people have a lower risk of hip fracture than inactive people.

See physical activity recommendations for different groups, including:

• Children age 3-5 .
• Children and adolescents age 6-17 .
• Adults age 18-64 .
• Adults 65 and older .
• Adults with chronic health conditions and disabilities .
• Healthy pregnant and postpartum women .

An estimated 110,000 deaths  per year could be prevented if US adults ages 40 and older increased their moderate-to-vigorous physical activity by a small amount. Even 10 minutes more a day would make a difference.

Taking more steps a day also helps lower the risk of premature death from all causes. For adults younger than 60, the risk of premature death leveled off at about 8,000 to 10,000 steps per day. For adults 60 and older, the risk of premature death leveled off at about 6,000 to 8,000 steps per day.

Regular physical activity can help people manage existing chronic conditions and disabilities. For example, regular physical activity can:

• Reduce pain and improve function, mood, and quality of life for adults with arthritis.
• Help control blood sugar levels and lower risk of heart disease and nerve damage for people with type 2 diabetes.
• Health Benefits Associated with Physical Activity for People with Chronic Conditions and Disabilities [PDF-14.4MB]
• Key Recommendations for Adults with Chronic Conditions and Disabilities [PDF-14.4MB]

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Essay on Physical Fitness

Students are often asked to write an essay on Physical Fitness in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Physical Fitness

What is physical fitness.

Physical fitness is about having a body that can do many activities without getting too tired. It means your heart, muscles, and bones are strong. When you are fit, you can run, jump, and play without feeling out of breath quickly.

Why is Fitness Important?

Being fit is good for your health. It helps you stay away from sickness. Kids who are fit can focus better in school. It also makes you feel happy and gives you more energy to enjoy life.

How to Get Fit

To get fit, you should be active. Run, swim, or play sports. Also, eat healthy foods like fruits, vegetables, and grains. Drink plenty of water and sleep well to help your body grow strong.

Staying Safe While Exercising

When you exercise, it’s important to be safe. Wear the right shoes and clothes. Start slow and learn the right way to move. Always listen to your body and rest if you feel pain or are very tired.

Also check:

• Paragraph on Physical Fitness
• Speech on Physical Fitness

250 Words Essay on Physical Fitness

Physical fitness means being in good health and shape. It’s when your body can do activities like running, jumping, and playing games without getting too tired quickly. Being fit is important for everyone, no matter how old they are. It helps us stay strong and healthy.

Parts of Physical Fitness

There are two main parts of being fit: aerobic fitness and muscle strength. Aerobic fitness is about how well your heart and lungs work when you exercise. When you can run for a long time without stopping, that’s good aerobic fitness. Muscle strength is when your muscles can lift things or do work without getting tired fast.

Why Being Fit Matters

Being fit is great for your body. It helps you not get sick often and can make you feel happier. When you’re fit, you can play with your friends and not feel like you need to stop and rest all the time. It also means you might not get hurt as often.

Getting fit can be fun. You can play sports, dance, swim, or even just go for walks. Eating healthy foods like fruits and vegetables helps too. It’s important to exercise a few times a week and not sit around too much.

Staying Fit

Once you’re fit, you have to keep exercising to stay that way. It’s like a game where you have to keep practicing to be good at it. Remember to stay active and eat well, and being fit will become a part of your life.

500 Words Essay on Physical Fitness

Physical fitness is about keeping your body in good shape. It means having the energy and strength to do daily activities without getting too tired. Just like a car needs fuel and a good engine to run smoothly, your body needs healthy food and exercise to work well.

Why is Being Fit Important?

Being fit is key to a happy and healthy life. When you are fit, you can play, run, and do your school work better. Your body fights off sickness easier, and you feel good about yourself. It’s not just about how you look; it’s about taking care of your body so that it can take care of you.

Types of Fitness

Fitness is not just one thing. There are different types, like strength, which lets you lift things; endurance, which is the power to keep going without stopping; flexibility, which helps you move your body in different ways; and balance, which keeps you from falling. Doing a mix of activities that help all these areas is the best way to stay fit.

Getting fit can be fun. You can play sports like soccer or basketball, swim, dance, or even just walk or bike around your neighborhood. It’s important to find activities you enjoy so that you will keep doing them. Try to move your body for at least an hour every day. This doesn’t have to be all at once; it can be spread out through the day.

Eating Right

Eating healthy foods helps your fitness too. Imagine your body is like a plant. Plants need water and good soil to grow. Your body needs healthy food and water to grow strong and stay fit. Eat plenty of fruits, vegetables, grains, and proteins, and drink lots of water. Try to eat less junk food, which is like giving your plant the wrong kind of soil.

Rest and Sleep

Rest is just as important as exercise. Your body needs to sleep and take breaks to rebuild and get ready for the next day. Make sure you get enough sleep each night. This helps your body heal and gives you the energy to be active and fit.

Staying Motivated

Sometimes it’s hard to stay on track with fitness. Setting goals can help. Maybe you want to be able to run a mile without stopping or learn a new sport. Write down your goals and how you plan to reach them. Celebrate when you meet them, and set new ones.

Physical fitness is a big part of a healthy life. It keeps your body strong and gives you the energy to do all the things you love. Remember, being fit isn’t just about how you look. It’s about taking good care of your body by moving around, eating well, resting, and setting goals to keep yourself motivated. Start taking steps towards being fit today, and your body will thank you for years to come.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Physical Development
• Essay on Physical Bullying
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What Is Physical Fitness?

This is an excerpt from fitness for life 6th edition with web resources-cloth by charles b. corbin & guy le masurier..

Physical fitness refers to the ability of your body systems to work together efficiently to allow you to be healthy and perform activities of daily living. Being efficient means doing daily activities with the least effort possible. A fit person is able to perform schoolwork, meet home responsibilities, and still have enough energy to enjoy sport and other leisure activities. A fit person can respond effectively to normal life situations, such as raking leaves at home, stocking shelves at a part-time job, and marching in the band at school. A fit person can also respond to emergency situations - for example, by running to get help or aiding a friend in distress.

The Parts of Physical Fitness

Physical fitness is made up of 11 parts - 6 of them health related and 5 skill related. All of the parts are important to good performance in physical activity, including sports. But the 6 are referred to as contributing to health-related physical fitness because scientists in kinesiology have shown that they can reduce your risk of chronic disease and promote good health and wellness. These parts of fitness are body composition , cardiorespiratory endurance , flexibility , muscular endurance , power , and strength . They also help you function effectively in daily activities.

As the name implies, skill-related physical fitness components help you perform well in sports and other activities that require motor skills. For example, speed helps you in sports such as track and field. These 5 parts of physical fitness are also linked to health but less so than the health-related components. For example, among older adults, balance , agility , and coordination are very important for preventing falls (a major health concern), and reaction time relates to risk for automobile accidents. Each part of physical fitness is described in more detail in the two following features: The Six Parts of Health-Related Fitness and The Five Parts of Skill-Related Fitness.

Health-Related Physical Fitness

Think about a runner. She can probably run a long distance without tiring; thus she has good fitness in at least one area of health-related physical fitness. But does she have good fitness in all six parts? Running is an excellent form of physical activity, but being a runner doesn't guarantee fitness in all parts of health-related physical fitness. Like the runner, you may be more fit in some parts of fitness than in others. The feature named The Six Parts of Health-Related Fitness describes each part and shows an example. As you read about each part, ask yourself how fit you think you are in that area.

Power, formerly classified as a skill-related part of fitness, is now classified as a health-related part of fitness. A report by the independent Institute of Medicine provides evidence of the link between physical power and health. The report indicates that power is associated with wellness, higher quality of life, reduced risk of chronic disease and early death, and better bone health. Power, and activities that improve power, have also been found to be important for healthy bones in children and teens.

How do you think you rate in each of the six health-related parts of fitness? To be healthy, you should be fit for each of the six parts. Totally fit people are less likely to develop a hypokinetic condition - a health problem caused partly by lack of physical activity - such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, osteoporosis, colon cancer, or a high body fat level . You'll learn more about hypokinetic conditions in other chapters of this book. People who are physically fit also enjoy better wellness. They feel better, look better, and have more energy. You don't have to be a great athlete in order to enjoy good health and wellness and be physically fit. Regular physical activity can improve anyone's health-related physical fitness.

Skill-Related Physical Fitness

Just as the runner in our example may not achieve a high rating in all parts of health-related physical fitness, she also may not rate the same in all parts of skill-related physical fitness. Though most sports require several parts of skill-related fitness, different sports can require different parts. For example, a skater might have good agility but lack good reaction time. Some people have more natural ability in some areas than in others. No matter how you score on the skill-related parts of physical fitness, you can enjoy some type of physical activity.

Remember, too, that good health doesn't come from being good in skill-related physical fitness. It comes from doing activities designed to improve your health-related physical fitness, and it can be enjoyed both by great athletes and by people who consider themselves poor athletes.

As noted earlier, health-related fitness offers a double benefit. It not only helps you stay healthy but also helps you perform well in sport and other activities. For example, cardiorespiratory endurance helps you resist heart disease and helps you perform well in sports such as swimming and cross-country running. Similarly, strength helps you perform well in sports such as football and wrestling, muscular endurance is important in soccer and tennis, flexibility helps in sports such as gymnastics and diving, power helps in track activities such as the discus throw and the long jump, and having a healthy amount of body fat makes your body more efficient in many activities.

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Importance of Physical Fitness Essay

People all over the world are becoming fitness conscious as they have realized that it is the most important and have shifted their priorities from everything else to keep them fit and fine as healthy with wealth. Regular exercise has several benefits it helps the body to get into the desired shape and develops resistance power from gaining additional and excessive weight. It helps a person safe from diseases such as obesity, blood pressure, heart diseases, and high cholesterol. Furthermore, an activity also helps in reducing depression and insomnia by enhancing sleeping routines. Also, such activity is known to produce positive vibes inside a person which in turn increases the person’s confidence. (Hardcastle, 2006)

Fitness training fine-tunes the muscles using and burning calories in the body which also increases the metabolic rate in the body. While an inactive person will have his or her body losing its muscles decreasing the metabolism of the body, resulting in concentration of calories and formation of fat and the person gains weight. Exercises like walking, jogging, running, swimming, doing push-ups and pull-ups, running up a flight of stairs, doing crunches, cycling, etc. not only helps a person maintain an outer strong and toned look but it also help the organs like heart, lungs, liver and other to function properly while giving mental peace. (Hasselfors, Hans, n.d.)

For the community, there can be several initiatives taken to help people exercise regularly and maintain a healthy diet. Being a nutritionist advisor, I can guide people on what types of food are healthy and which types of foods should be avoided. As a social welfare worker, I can organize marathons for social causes where people can participate in the form of marathon exercises and also serve a more worldly cause. By adopting an educationist’s role, I can educate the positive aspects of personal fitness and make people aware of the negatives of not exercising. Also, I can start dancing lessons for young boys and girls where from an early stage not only children learn to dance but also learn to exercise. Furthermore, I can become a sport’s proponent where teaching people to play sports will also help them increase their activity and become fit. (Personal Health Zone, 2009)

The most common type of exercise is walking or running. From a casual stroll to a paced walk every day works the muscles relentlessly. Yet another popular exercise common amongst the younger people is playing sports since most sports involve running and stretching out the body muscles. Aerobics or even dancing is a type of exercise that is fun yet physically strengthening. Although swimming might fall under the banner of sports, most people swim to relax in the water and have a good time, and can exercise their body at the same time. For the more body-conscious people, bodybuilding is a set of exercises that strengthens the muscles by picking weights and putting regular pressure. Carrying excessive loads from to and fro also is a form of exercise. Furthermore, in a computer-related work environment, where repetitive strain injury (RSI) is quite common, people should take regular breaks and stretch out their muscles. People recommend the use of machines available in gymnasiums to flex their muscles. Yet another method of exercising is cycling either on a bicycle or a gymnasium machine. (ADAM, 2004)

Active people tend to outlive those who are inactive. In case of being physically inactive for a long time and then taking drastic measures to lose weight to achieve a good result is not an efficient way, as it will not have a lifelong effect on the body. It is rather recommended to consult the physician and go slowly and step-wise. Alongside maintaining a healthy lifestyle by eating healthy food, avoiding junk and fast food, and exercising regularly mainly in the early morning and late evening as these are the effective times for exercising.

ADAM (2004). Exercise . Web.

Hardcastle, J. (2006). The Importance of Physical Fitness .

Hasselfors, H. (N.D) Fitness Training. Web.

Personal Health Zone (2009). Health and Fitness . Web.

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• v.100(2); Mar-Apr 1985

Physical activity, exercise, and physical fitness: definitions and distinctions for health-related research.

"Physical activity," "exercise," and "physical fitness" are terms that describe different concepts. However, they are often confused with one another, and the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. This paper proposes definitions to distinguish them. Physical activity is defined as any bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles that results in energy expenditure. The energy expenditure can be measured in kilocalories. Physical activity in daily life can be categorized into occupational, sports, conditioning, household, or other activities. Exercise is a subset of physical activity that is planned, structured, and repetitive and has as a final or an intermediate objective the improvement or maintenance of physical fitness. Physical fitness is a set of attributes that are either health- or skill-related. The degree to which people have these attributes can be measured with specific tests. These definitions are offered as an interpretational framework for comparing studies that relate physical activity, exercise, and physical fitness to health.

Full text is available as a scanned copy of the original print version. Get a printable copy (PDF file) of the complete article (2.1M), or click on a page image below to browse page by page. Links to PubMed are also available for Selected References .

Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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