Find out about:

Strength | Power | Obesity | Endurance | Flexibilty | Bone Density | BMR

Strength

What is Muscular Strength?
Muscular Strength is being able to perform everyday tasks such as, walking, climbing stairs, lifting and even breathing efficiently.
What problems can be caused by lack of  Muscular Strength?
Loss of muscular strength alone will lead to disability and lack of independence. Women are particularly vulnerable because they have less muscle mass to begin with, and so lose strength far more quickly than men. Nearly 50% of women over 45 do not have enough strength in their legs to rise from a chair even when using their arms for additional help. It is vital to maintain strength in the main functional muscles, i.e. the legs, arms, ankles and back.
What are the Fitness Benefits of Muscular Strength?
By including Muscular Strength as one of your fitness goals, you will be increasing your lean body mass, which in return, will increase your metabolic rate by 33.3%.Muscular Strength also increases your oxygen and nutrients available to muscles, bones and brain cells.
What are the Medical Benefits of Muscular Strength?
Increasing muscular strength will also reduce the risks of developing Arthritis, Hypertension and on set diabetes.

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Power

What is Power?
Power is the ability to use our muscles fast when we need them, for example; to prevent a trip from becoming a fall, you must be able to correct the trip quickly.
Why is Power Important?
We lose our power more quickly than our strength, as it is not only the performance of the muscle, which is important, but also the nervous system’s ability to send and save information between the brain and muscle.What are the Fitness benefits of increasing Power?By including power as one of your fitness goals you will be increasing your explosive strength, your reaction times and your brain to muscle contractions (reactions).
What are the Health Benefits of Increasing Power?
As well as strength training you will also increase your metabolic rate and increase your oxygen and nutrients available to your muscles, bones and brain cells.
What are the Medical Benefits of Increasing Power?
Increasing power will reduce the risk of neurological diseases, hardening of the arteries, osteoporosis and fractures.

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Obesity

What is Obesity
Obesity is a high accumulation of fat in the body’s fat cells.
The fat may be equally distributed on the body, on the stomach (apple shaped), or on the hips and thighs (pear shaped). 
How do we measure Obesity?
An excellent method to measure obesity or overweight is the body mass index test (BMI).  It is calculated as your weight (in kgs) divided by your height (in metres) squared. 
How common is obesity
Obesity is found a little more amongst men than women.  Stomach obesity is more frequent and occurs in 30% of adult men and to a lesser degree, in adult women.Obesity and stomach obesity are rapidly increasing especially in young people.The occurrence of obesity has increased by five fold since the second world war and many obesity experts now believe we are seriously at risk of developing and obesity epidemic in the western world in the next generation or even sooner.
What are the serious obesity-related diseases?
Most importantly being overweight and obese may cause several psychological problems like a feeling of inferiority, often caused by discrimination.  Furthermore, many physical problems are related to obesity, like difficulties in breathing, personal hygiene, pain in the knees and back and skin problems.People suffering from obesity more frequently have high Blood Pressure and diseases related to hardening of the arteries, with blood clots in the heart and the brain.  Often related problems include non-insulin dependent diabetes, gallstones and some types of cancer.
What Causes Obesity
Obesity can be hereditary, hence some people are at increased risk.  However, obesity only develops from overeating, irregular meals and lack of daily physical activity
So what can we do about it?
Physical activity helps to reduce body fat, by improving the body’s ability to burn excess calories.  When you combine exercise with the correct nutritional advice not only are you burning off excess calories you are controlling the about of calories you take on board.  All this will help control your weight and prevent obesity which is a major risk factor for many diseases.

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Flexibility

What is Flexibility?
Flexibility ensures that you can perform a range of movements needed for everyday tasks, for example; bending down to tie a shoelace, washing your hair or stretching to take plates from a cupboard.Nearly a quarter of people over the age of 35 do not have adequate shoulder, spinal or hip flexibility to carry out simple day-to-day tasks.
Why do we need to do Flexibility Exercises?
Flexibility of the spine is particularly important if you want to avoid stiffness and back pain.Remember that all of our muscles are connected, so that if we have tight calf muscles it can pull down like a chain affecting flexibility within the upper back area.
What problems can we encounter if we lack Flexibility?
Stiffness in joints can lead to lack of mobility and range of movement and is also one of the main reasons why reaction times slow down.
What are the health benefits of increasing your Flexibility?
By including flexibility as one of your fitness goals, you will be increasing your range of movements and mobility. Increasing flexibility will reduce the risk of joint stiffness, back pains and muscular strains.

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Endurance

What is Endurance?
Endurance or cardiovascular fitness is vital to ensure that the heart and arteries are supplying oxygenated blood cells around the body.
What does Endurance Training do?
This process helps keep the whole system free from disease.  Any exercise which makes you warm and increases your resting heart rate and the rate of your breathing (also called aerobic exercise) will benefit your cardiovascular system.
Why do Endurance Training?
You need endurance to avoid undue tiredness, which is often attributed to medical conditions rather than unfitness.
What are the Fitness benefits of Endurance Training?
By including endurance as one of your fitness goals you will be decreasing your resting heart rate, increasing your energy levels and increasing your lung capacity, which in return, strengthens the whole cardiovascular process.

What are the Medical Benefits of Endurance Training?
Increasing endurance and cardiovascular fitness will reduce your risk of chronic heart disease (CHD), cardiovascular disease, (CVD), angina and stroke.

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Bone Density

What is Bone Density?
Bone is a living tissue that is constantly being replenished.
By the age of 35 you have reached peak bone mass and after that you will start to loss bone at a slow rate.  Women, however, lose bone mass far faster than men; this is mainly because of the menopause.
If you lose too much bone mass, you will be prone to fractures in vulnerable places such as the hips, wrists and spine.
How can I increase my Bone Density?
Calcium and other minerals, which come from food like milk, dairy produce and green vegetables such as broccoli, are used in the bone-forming process so diet plays a large part in healthy bones.
However, diet alone will not preserve bone density, it is vital to do weight-bearing exercise that puts a stress on the bones, as this will maintain bone density.
What are the Fitness Benefits of Increased Bone Density?
By including Bone Density as one of your fitness goals, you are not only strengthening your bones you are also strengthening your joints.
What are the Medical Benefits of  Increasing Bone Density?
Working on increasing bone density slowing down bone density loss you will be reduce the risk of Osteoporosis and Fractures

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Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)

What it is Metabolic Rate?
Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is the amount of energy expanded while at rest. BMR decreases with age and with the loss of lean body mass. Increased cardiovascular exercise and muscle mass can increase your (BMR).
How to increase your Metabolic Rate
Your metabolism is determined by gender, age, amount of muscle you have compared to body fat and the amount of exercise you do on a regular basis.  Males rates are higher than females because of testosterone.
As you age, men are fairly consistent until about the age of 70 when testosterone levels drop off. Women's rates increase during pregnancy and are even higher when breast feeding, but drop when they go through menopause. Exercise to maintain or increase CV fitness/muscle helps increase metabolic rate for up to 12 hours after exercise.
So get up off the couch, turn off the TV and do an exercise you like for 30 minutes, 5 times per week.

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