By: Luke Frankel
Chapter 10 is all about fitness, and I am going to tell you guys what defines fitness, how you can become more “fit”, and my own personal experience with fitness.
Fitness is defined “Physical fitness”, ” a set of health- and performance-related attributes. These attributes—cardiorespiratory fitness, muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, and body composition—allow us to perform moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activities on a regular basis without getting too tired and with energy left over to handle physical or mental emergencies” (Donatelle 229). It is important to define what fitness is because there are so many different definitions of it out there. If you talk to a tennis player they’ll tell you something objective like, “fitness is the ability to be able to play a whole match of tennis without letting your fatigue affect your game”. You could ask a basketball player or football player the same question and you’d get two different answers.
Now for how you can become more fit. It is hard to define what fit means in every specific aspect but the book has a solid definition. “The FITT prescription for cardiorespiratory fitness includes 3 to 5 days per week of vigorous, rhythmic, continuous activity at 64 to 96 percent of your estimated maximal heart rate for 20 to 60 minutes” (Donatelle 238). Like I said before it is hard to define fitness for every single sport or activity, but cardiorespiratory fitness is a great place to start.
Lastly, my own experience with fitness has had its own shares of ups and downs. I started off as a young obese boy trying to teach myself how to layups on a basketball hoop because I always loved watched NBA games. I was extremely out of shape but I had a dream and had no idea how to achieve my goal of playing on a team. It took a long time and a lot of good and bad information through books and the internet to teach myself how to get better. This introduction into fitness through basketball has led me into a much larger career of playing football, track and field, becoming a personal trainer, and competing in power lifting.
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