Foundations of Health & Fitness Goals

By David Kawahata

Whether you are starting your health and fitness journey for the first time in your life or you are re-starting a journey that has been deprived of your focus and attention, there is an ideal order that ought to be followed.

Health

The first focus should be overall health. Overall health can be broken down into four different pillars:

1. Physical Health

Physical health is simply the normal functioning of the human body and physiological body systems. Things such as blood pressure, cholesterol, and weight control are all areas of physical health that we can measure and are associated with quality and length of life.

2. Psychological Health

Psychological health is the physiological functioning of our brain and brain systems.

3. Emotional Health

Emotional health is more about dealing with experiences and our reactions to situations. The big difference between psychological and emotional health is that psychological health is more of the clinical view of the brain, while emotional health is more of the outward expression that other people see and respond to.

4. Spiritual Health

Lastly, spiritual health is a massive part of who we are as humans; regardless of our beliefs on the purpose of life, spiritual health is the main foundation from which we set most of our morals and values.

Fitness

We can focus on fitness once our overall health is up to par. Overall fitness focuses on meeting exercise guidelines that promote better health, improve quality of life, and increase life expectancy. Three categories make up our overall fitness; decrements in any of these areas will drastically increase the risk of injury and/or the risk of developing health-related illnesses:

1. Mobility

Mobility is the ability to move freely and easily, with control and without effort.

2. Stability

Your body can safely and effectively maintain and control various postures and resist changes in equilibrium.

3. Cardiovascular Endurance

Cardiovascular endurance measures how well you can do exercises that involve your whole body at moderate to high intensity for an extended time.

Specialized Goals

The last and final detail is focusing on specialized goals. Unfortunately, most people begin their fitness journey incorrectly by starting with specialized goals; however, this may be detrimental because it increases the risk of injury and/or the development of health-related illnesses. Specialized goals include areas such as:

1. Strength

Strength is the amount of weight the body can push or pull.

2. Speed

Speed is the ability to move the body in one direction as fast as possible.

3. Agility

Agility is the ability to accelerate, decelerate, stabilize, and quickly change directions.

4. Aesthetic Appeal

Aesthetic appeal refers to the visual attractiveness of a person's physique. This typically involves a combination of muscle definition, symmetry, proportion, and overall body composition.

The Take Away

Let's consider our health and fitness journey as if we were building a house. Our health is the foundation, our fitness is the framing, and our specialized goals are the extraordinary finishes. The programming we strategically design for you in Glazed helps to iteratively achieve better mobility, stability, and cardio endurance while sprinkling in specialized workouts that help build strength and increase speed and agility.