Wellness
Endurance, strength, balance, and flexibility are interconnecting parts that make up the term called wellness. Essentially, when our bodies are in motion and responding positively with these four types of exercises we have wellness.
Exercise. We have heard this term many times before. However, the term wellness describes the state of being a dynamic healthy person. Both exercise and wellness are interconnected and the reason our bodies are increasing in health or lacking in health. But, how can our bodies grow in any of these areas of exercise? Let’s take a closer look at endurance and strength.
Endurance
“Endurance exercise training exerts many positive effects on health, including improved metabolism, reduction of cardiovascular risk, and reduced all-cause and cardiovascular mortality.” (Mikic et al., 2016) You might be asking yourself why endurance is a good training program. Isotonic or dynamic contractions is large skeletal muscle groups that change in length while generating force like when we run for several minutes. Endurance exercise protects the cardiovascular system, increases oxygen transport throughout the body, increases red blood cell mass, plasma volume and maintains weight control (2016).
Types of endurance training with appropriate rest periods include, but are not subject to:
- running
- cycling
- swimming
- walking
- hiking
Muscular Strength
Muscular strength, endurance, and hypertrophy all contribute to muscular wellness. Specifically, muscular strength is the building blocks of a muscular physique and muscle strength in the long run. The ability to lift the heaviest amount of weight or resistance is the goal of a muscular strength program (Timothy et al., 2013, pp. 27–31). Along with surplus calories with at least 1g of protein per pound of body weight, DRI (daily recommended intake) of carbohydrates, and fats; there are a few other steps to help grow your muscles.
Progressive Overload:
- This is when you systematically and progressively increase the stress on your muscles over time, this will cause a physiological adaptation to occur (pp. 29).
- Resistance weight, repetitions, sets, frequency, and rest all contribute to overloading your muscles.
- Volume is the sum of all repetitions, sets, and resistance for the strength training session.
- Periodization is designing strength training programs into phases (or weeks) such as macrocycles, microcycles, and mesocycles depending on your goal(s) (pp. 30).
Summary
Each year your goal should surround increasing your physiological health. Imagine a balance where health sits in the middle surrounding by underlying risk factors and optimal healing. Every season we have a new chance to push the pendulum towards holistic health or wellness giving us an advantage to remain younger in our biological age even though our chronological age gets older.
Author: Jamie Moore Senior Sam Houston Pre-Nursing
Works Cited
Morici, G. M., Gruttad’Auria, C. I. G., Baiamonte, P. B., Mazzuca, E. M., Castrogiovanni, A. C., & Bonsignore, M. R. B. (2016, June 1). Endurance training: is it bad for you? PubMed Central (PMC). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4933620/
Timothy, S., Gary, O., Matthew C, W., & Ronald, N. (2013). Strength Training for Total Health and Wellness (1st ed.). Kendall Hunt Publishing.