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Ten Components of Fitness
The ten components of fitness are the aspects Personal Evolution aims to develop equally in the athlete. Most programmes focus on only one or a small number of these fitness components. For instance the average health club fitness programming generally focuses on one or a combination of strength, flexibility and cardiovascular endurance. Athletic conditioning programmes focus on a very narrow group also. Generally the athlete is conditioned only narrowly in their chosen discipline and develops weak links in training and competition as a result.
The Russian Kettlebell Challenge
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Personal Evolution focuses on the ten components of fitness. These components differ among programmes. For example; CrossFit has a couple of components we don’t include and misses a few that we do include. Other methodologies focus on only five or seven fitness components.
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The ten components of fitness are...
(The following list includes further explanation if you click on the title word of each list item, eg; click Endurance for a page about endurance).
- Endurance: We deliberately generalise endurance into one single component, whereas common fitness literature puts endurance into categories such as cardiovascular/aerobic, anaerobic, muscular/strength etc. Endurance is as much psychological as it is physical. We take endurance simply as the dictionary definition: The act, quality or power of withstanding stress or hardship. It also includes the ability of the body systems to process, deliver, store and utilise energy.
- Strength: Strength is the ability of a muscular unit or group of muscular units to apply force at a given intensity. Personal Evolution’s approach to strength is to focus on relative strength or strength to weight ratio as opposed to simply absolute strength. That means that strength to us is measured differently and takes bodyweight into account.
- Flexibility: Flexibility is the ability to achieve a percentage of the maximum range of motion at a given joint. We could further specify flexibility as “functional flexibility”, meaning that flexibility is always conditioned in the context of actual tasks.
- Power: Power is the ability of a muscular unit or group of muscular units to generate maximum force in a minimum timeframe. Basically it comes down to force X velocity. Power also has a second meaning, that is the capacity for maximum output in a given period of time.
- Speed: Speed is the ability to minimise the amount of time it takes to repeat a movement. As a sub-component of speed, it is also important to condition reaction time, which is the time between recognition of a stimulus and physical reaction to that stimulus.
- Coordination: Coordination is the ability to combine multiple movement patterns into one movement. Coordination can also refer to the synergistic sequence of muscle contraction required to move a heavy load more efficiently, hence contributing to strength.
- Agility: Agility is the ability to transfer mechanical energy from one movement to another in minimal time.
- Balance: Balance is the ability to control the body through a given movement in relation to its support base.
- Body Composition: Body composition is the percentage of bodyweight made up of each of the major tissue types. That includes fat percentage, muscle percentage, bone percentage and how much it all contributes to bodyweight and size.
- Anaerobic Capacity: Anaerobic capacity is the ability to perform at near maximal intensity for the maximum time. It can be measured by the time it takes to reach exhaustion at a given level of output. It can also be defined as the total amount of energy obtainable from the anaerobic energy systems. That is the combined capacity of the ATP, phospho-creatine and lactic acid systems within a given timeframe.
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Some of these ten components of fitness are aspects related purely to physiological capacity, whereas others are skill-related and can come about through development of combinations of skills. In all ten components we place a high emphasis on psychology and how it relates to the development and performance of each individual quality.
Before you go out and buy a home gym, Concept 2 rower or some dumbells check out the following fitness equipment review site. They are an independent resource, meaning they are not one of the big exercise equipment companies trying to flog off their own gear...
Fitness Equipment Reviews: Reviews of leading fitness equipment such as exercise bikes, elliptical trainers, treadmills and home gyms.
 
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