Three Basic Types of Physical Fitness

Physical fitness includes having a strong heart, powerful muscles, balance and agility, muscular endurance and speed and quickness. To improve your fitness in these areas, you'll need to create different workouts by varying the intensities at which you perform your exercises, such as using more resistance to build strength, and working at higher speeds for short durations to build speed. For many people, basic fitness includes your ability to perform physical activity with a sound cardio, strength and endurance base.

Types of Fitness

To exercise, work, do daily chores and play sports, you’ll need varying levels of cardiorespiratory capacity and stamina, muscle strength and endurance, footwork skills and speed. Training for one type of fitness often requires different types of exercises than training for another type of fitness. For example, strength training uses heavy weights and slower muscle movements than sprint training, which is performed with little resistance and high-speed muscle movements. These different types of fitness workouts recruit different muscle fibers and burn different amounts of fat and glycogen. It's best to focus on strength and endurance exercise during a sport off-season, and work on speed and recovery during the preseason and in season.

Cardio Fitness

To get in top physical shape, you’ll need to work on three different areas of cardiorespiratory fitness. Capacity is the amount of work you can do, such as how fast you can perform a sprint or dash. Stamina refers to how long you can exercise. For example, a sprinter is faster than a marathon runner, but probably can’t run as long or as far as the marathoner. Anaerobic conditioning helps you work at very high intensities and helps you recover more quickly afterward. For example, many basketball players have no problem making fast breaks down the court, but afterward, you see them grabbing their knees, gasping for breath as they try to recover. Interval training consists of many high-intensity bursts of activity, each followed by a recovery period. These recovery periods, which occur many times during an interval workout, help you improve your ability to catch your breath after a point or play and recover for the start of the next one.

Strength

Strength refers to the ability of your muscles to perform work at one time, such as lifting a heavy barbell. You build strength by putting enough resistance against your muscles that you cause damage to them. When your muscles repair themselves in response to this damage, they grow bigger. Since your heart and lungs are muscles, some people refer to your cardio capacity as cardio strength.

Endurance

Endurance is your ability to perform physical activity over time. You might be able to serve aces and hit winning forehands and backhands, but if your muscles cramp or you run out of energy after a few games, you won’t win any matches. You build endurance by exercising for longer periods without stopping, working at a slower speed than when you interval train. This type of exercise is usually aerobic, calling on your slow-twitch muscle fibers and burning more fat than glycogen, depending on the speed you work. The slower you work, the higher percentage of your calories burned comes from fat.

How to Love Moving

• Be Realistic

First-time exercisers often set unrealistic goals that are too ambitious for beginners. Gerald Endress, fitness director of the Duke Diet and Fitness Center in Durham, N.C. says, “They want to go for maximal goals, but they tend to get overwhelmed.”

So don’t start off trying to work out an hour every day. Instead, set more reasonable, achievable goals, like exercising 20 to 30 minutes two or three times a week.

• Keep Track of Your Progress

Remember to chart your progress, whether it's with a high-tech online tracker or an old-school fitness journal. Seeing incremental improvements, whether it's improved time, increased reps, or greater frequency of workouts, can boost your exercise motivation.

• Don't Expect Perfection

Another pitfall is all-or-nothing thinking, a perfectionist way of looking at life that leads to giving up when you miss a day or two or your workout doesn’t go well. Endress says if you accept that there will be some sidesteps on your fitness journey, you’ll be better prepared mentally to deal with setbacks.

Expect that you'll get sick from time to time, and be psychologically prepared to miss a few days of exercise when that happens. Don’t let it be an excuse for giving up. "From then on, many people say, ‘I can’t exercise,'" Endress says. "But there’s always a way to exercise."

To keep injuries from sidelining you, do your best to prevent them by warming up, cooling down, stretching properly, and not doing too much too soon.

• Don't Compare Yourself to Others

We’ve all seen those toned, fatless specimens who strut through the gym in their Barbie-sized shorts and sports bras.

Don’t compare yourself to them, Endress says. Forget about them. Forgive them. But do not let them deter you from your goal.

• Get Support

Enlist the help of your spouse, girlfriends, boyfriends, buddies -- anyone who will encourage you to stay on track.

"The person should be in support, but not say, 'Why can’t you? It’s so easy,'" says Sottovia. If helpful reassurance turns into criticism, gently remind your pal that you don’t need nagging.

If you need additional help, hire a trainer, she advises.

Find the Fun In It

If you're not the gym type, walk around your neighborhood or try activities around the house, such as walking up and down stairs or dancing with the stars in your living room. If you're motivated by being social, follow Geiger's lead and join a team.

• Break It Up

You can make it easier on yourself by splitting your exercise session into two or three sessions, says Endress. Research supports the idea that this can be as beneficial as one long workout, he says.

So, for example, if you don’t feel like exercising for an hour on any given day, do three sessions of 20 minutes each.

• Make It Convenient

Do whatever you can to remove obstacles to exercise, and make it as convenient as possible, says Sottovia.

If you are time-pressed, for example, don't spend 30 minutes driving to a gym. Try exercising at home to fitness DVDs instead. If you're too tired to work out at the end of the day, set your alarm a little earlier and exercise in the morning.

• Forget the Past

Don't let previous bad experiences with exercise hinder you, Sottovia says.

So maybe you weren’t the most athletic kid in high school and were the last chosen for class games. That was years ago. Your goal now is not to win a letter jacket or make the cheerleading squad -- you want to exercise to stay healthy and enjoy your life.

• Reward Yourself

Treat yourself for making the effort to exercise -- not with food, but with something that you enjoy, like a movie or flowers, says Endress

Try to think of indulgences that will reinforce a mind-body connection so you can savor the rewards of your hard work. Plan a short trip, or just an hour in a botanical garden. Go to a ball game. And remind yourself with each precious moment that you are enjoying this time because of all the great things you have been doing for yourself.

source: WEBMD

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Get Better with Age

Funny interview questions about IQ

Interviewer: There are 500 bricks on a plane.
You drop one outside. How many are left?
Applicant: That's easy, 499

Interviewer: What are the three steps to put an elephant into a fridge?
Applicant: Open the fridge.
Put the elephant in.
Close the fridge.

Interviewer: What are the four steps to put a deer into the fridge?
Applicant: Open the fridge.
Take the elephant out.
Put the deer in.
Close the fridge.

Interviewer: It's lion's birthday,
all the animals are there except one, why?
Applicant: Because the deer is in the fridge.

Interviewer: How does an old woman cross a swamp filled with crocodiles?
Applicant: She just crosses it
because the crocodiles are at the lion's birthday.

Interviewer: Last question.
In the end the old lady still died, Why?

Applicant: Err....I guess she drowned?
Interviewer: No! She was hit by the brick. You may leave now.

Effects Of Cold Water On Human Body

For those who like to drink cold water, this article is applicable to you. It is nice to have a cup of cold drink after a meal. However, the cold water will solidify the oily stuff that you have just consumed. It will slow down the digestion. Once this "sludge" reacts with the acid, it will break down and be absorbed by the intestine faster than the solid food. It will line the intestine. Very soon, this will turn into fats and lead to cancer. It is best to drink hot soup or warm water after a meal.
A serious note about heart attacks - You should know that not every heart attack symptom is going to be the left arm hurting. Be aware of intense pain in the jaw line.

You may never have the first chest pain during the course of a heart attack. Nausea and intense sweating are also common symptoms. 60% of people who have a heart attack while they are asleep do not wake up. Pain in the jaw can wake you from a sound sleep. Let's be careful and be aware. The more we know the better chance we could survive.
A cardiologist says if everyone who reads this message shares it, you can be sure that we'll save at least one life.

Little Ways to Enjoy Life More

Chill for a minute before you get out of your car and finish that song that’s playing.

Stare at the stars. Think about how big the universe is & how lucky you are to be here.

Without doing anything else, sit & listen to a song that you love in its entirety.

At random times & places throughout your day, stop & look at the scene in front of you as if it were a photograph or painting in a museum. What details would you notice? What would make it “beautiful?”

Play an instrument. Play whatever comes to you; don’t worry about if it sounds good or not.

Ignore conventions; love something that no one else loves, & be proud of it.

Forget worrying about what people think.

Find a good comic strip that always makes you laugh & read it often

Be honest with yourself. There is really nothing to lose.
Once you are honest with yourself, figure out your weaknesses. Either accept them, or improve.

Find the humor in unfavorable situations.

Cheer people up. It’s easy to do since so many people are stressed about things.

Always have a plan B, or a worst case scenario you can live with.

Listen to classical music.

Find answers to your questions. Unravel the mysteries of life.