What Part of Fitness Should I Use Today?

In the wide world of fitness there are so many different ways to turn.  You have mobility, strength, endurance, not to mention the mental battle just to stay on the program that you are currently doing.  Today we will take a simplified look at mobility, strength, and endurance and how you can apply these modalities to your everyday fitness routine.  

MOBILITY

Mobility refers to the consistency of the range of motion of all of your joints in your body.  Flexibility training is a way that you can gain more mobility through a given range of motion.  .  Another way we can work on our mobility is to use active range of motion training.  This is when you take a given joint slowly through its entire range in the hopes of bringing more blood flow to the joint resulting in a greater range with each repetition that is done.  According to the American Council on Exercise, or ACE, for flexibility or mobility training to be the most effective it needs to be done around 20 minutes a day for 5 days per week.  Next let's tackle strength.

STRENGTH

When we are talking about strength we are talking about our ability to move an object or load a single time.  The goal of strength training is to increase the load in which you are lifting over time through a given range of motion.  For example if you can squat 30 lbs on day 1 a good goal would be to lift 35 lbs on day 10.  The frequency of strength training depends on which muscle groups you are training.  For simplicity sake if you are doing full body strength workouts then you have to wait 24 hours before doing your next workout.  Remember strength refers to lifting an object 1 time.  Finally we have endurance.

ENDURANCE

Endurance refers to the ability to lift or move in a plane of movement repeatedly over time.  This can mean running for a set distance or lifting a weight up and down for a set of repetitions.  Endurance is training your cardiovascular system to be able to repeat the motion over and over again while efficiently regenerating energy to keep going. This type of training can be done every other day up to 5 days in a week. When thinking about which modality to use remember the definition of each.

MODALITIES AND GOALS

Correctly choosing a modality is all about knowing yourself and setting a goal that reflects the modality that you are going to be using.  If your goal is to be able to stay up later with your kids or grandkids then we need to work on your endurance so your body uses fuel more efficiently.  If you are having trouble at a new job lifting heavy boxes onto a shelf then work on your strength.  Finally if you are stiff all the time or you find yourself losing abilities like looking over your shoulder when you back up in your car then the work needs to be more on your mobility.  

A good program utilizes all three of these modalities to help you reach a specific goal.  Remember to match the modality to the goal not the goal to the modality.  The things in fitness that we like and are good at are not usually the things that we need to work on.  Get into the hard stuff! Let it help you grow!

If you need help integrating any of these modalities into a program that will help you meet your goals, set up a free consultation on our website today!