You are never too unfit to be without hope. A lifestyle fitness program is designed to enable each individual to calculate precise fitness levels of each major muscle group in the body. You can estimate how much fat your body can contain and how much weight you should sensibly aim to lose. The key to fitness is to schedule realistic targets.

What is fitness? There is no single measurement of physical fitness. It can depend on several separate elements, the most important of which are the three S’s – strength, stamina and suppleness.

Strength is the force a muscle can exert and depends primarily on the size of muscle and the number of muscle fibres that can be brought into action at any time. Examples of daily strength activities include carrying your own shopping.

Stamina, the ability to repeat a muscular action over and over again, or to sustain a muscular contraction, depends chiefly on the functioning of the cardio-vascular system – the ability of the body to transport food and oxygen to the muscles and to carry waste products away from them. Stamina activities include climbing stairs and brisk walking while stamina sports include running, swimming and cycling.

Suppleness measures the range of movement in muscles and joints. Activities include stretching up to shelves and do-it-yourself activities. Dancing and gymnastics keep you supple.

Your pulse rate is a useful guide to the efficiency of your circulatory system, especially during exercise. Monitoring your heart rate will help you check that you are exercising at the correct level of intensity. Your heart is a muscle about the size of your fist. If you can clench your fist 60 times a minute you will be surprised how hard it is and yet this is what your heart does every minute of the day. Like any other muscle, the heart becomes weaker if it is not exercised.

Fitness, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder. A sight to be proud of.

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