What It Is, Health Benefits, and Getting Started

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Types of Fitness

The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans — which HHS highlights as the components to include in a weekly exercise regimen — outlines several types of fitness that are important for building a well-rounded exercise routine. The following are some of those types of fitness.

Aerobic (Cardiovascular) Exercise

Aerobic exercise is the foundation of every fitness program — and for good reason. Also called cardiovascular exercise or cardio, this type of physical activity increases your heart rate and breathing rate, which improves your cardiorespiratory fitness, according to the American Heart Association.

Aerobic exercise includes activities like brisk walking, running, cycling, swimming, aerobic fitness classes (like kickboxing), dancing, yard work, tennis, and jumping rope, per the Physical Activity Guidelines.

Strength Training

Strength training is an important way to improve mobility and overall functioning, particularly as you get older.

“As you age, you lose muscle mass, which can have a significant impact on the quality of life. Strength exercises build bones and muscle, and more muscle protects your body from falls and the fractures that can happen in older age,” says Robert Sallis, MD, a family medicine doctor at Kaiser Permanente in Fontana, California, and chair of the Exercise Is Medicine initiative with the American College of Sports Medicine.

According to the National Academy of Sports Medicine, strength or resistance training boosts muscular strength and endurance through exercise against an external force.

 Strength-training activities include lifting weights, using resistance bands or your body weight, carrying heavy loads, and even strenuous gardening, per the Physical Activity Guidelines from the HHS.

Flexibility and Mobility

Flexibility and mobility are both important components of healthy movement, according to the International Sports Sciences Association.

However, the two are not synonymous.

Flexibility refers to the ability of tendons, muscles, and ligaments to stretch, while mobility refers to the body’s ability to take a joint through its full range of motion.

There is no specific recommendation for the number of minutes you should do activities that improve flexibility or mobility (such as stretching), and the health benefits of those activities are not known because of a lack of research on the topic, according to the Physical Activity Guidelines from HHS.

But the guidelines note that flexibility exercises are important for physical fitness.

And the guidelines do recommend that older adults incorporate balance training into their weekly fitness routine. Evidence suggests that regular exercise that includes balance training can significantly reduce older adults’ risk of falls, which can cause serious and debilitating injuries, among other consequences.

Rest and Recovery

It’s crucial to incorporate rest and recovery into your routine to repair the natural damage that muscles endure during exercise. Exercise, by definition, puts stress on the muscles and the body. The repairing or healing of that stress is how you get stronger (and fitter). But you need to give the body adequate rest after a workout for that recovery process to happen.

Recovery days can include no physical activity at all or they may look like an active recovery day, which means doing low-intensity, low-impact forms of exercise, such as walking or gentle yoga. Dr. Sallis generally recommends doing some activity every day, such as a 10-minute walk outdoors.

For rest and recovery days, the idea isn’t that you’re immobile on your couch; it’s just that you’re not pushing yourself to a point where physical activity feels strenuous or challenging.



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