24 March 2021 By: Mark Hakkeling
What exactly is 'fitness'?
Fitness is often seen as: How well do you score in endurance. This is also fairly easy to see from the outside; are you quickly out of breath and how long can you last?
But fitness is more.
We can best divide fitness into 5 parts that you can probably easily put over your own sports experience.
A number of (almost regularities) belong to this circle:
Endurance and power are the easiest to train and the training results are clearly visible. You can deliver faster, more often, longer and more power.
It is also quickly clear if insufficient attention has been paid to this during training; you don't come along and/or others perform better.
Flexibility, stability and agility are also easy to train, but the result is less visible/quickly visible. In the longer term, it will become visible if little or no attention is paid to this. More (minor) injuries, smaller range of motion, avoiding situations, worse performance despite a lot of training.
Flexibility : The range of motion of one or more joints
Can you move at the angles that suit your sports practice?
Stability : The degree to which you can maintain the position of your body or body parts.
Can you use your body weight in a controlled manner in your sports practice, are you not easily out of balance?
Agility : Be able to move efficiently, adapted to the situation. Being able to adjust the position of your body or body parts to the situation
Can you steer the position of all body parts efficiently and be in the right position in time that situation demands of you. Prepare, evade, finish.
Endurance : Being able to sustain an activity.
Can you sustain an assignment for a long time? How tired do you get. This makes whether you can practice a little longer and a little longer and/or more practice makes you learn it faster.
Power (force x speed) : Being able to move the body in a specific direction at speedmove.
How much power can you deliver. If you can give little power, you have more trouble moving and/or accelerating your body.
The first and most important question for you now is: Put this model over your own sport(s) and how do you score on the different parts?
Next time: “the further”.
