Wokingham Boot Camp Covers All Kinds of Fitness

Following a programme on the television recently about all things health and fitness and what it means to us in different stages of our life, I was asked by a camper from our Twyford Fit Camp how it works within Fit Camp sessions. So I thought we’d have a little education slot on what the different types of fitness are first.

When you train as a Fitness Instructor one of the first things you learn after anatomy and physiology are the different types of fitness that make up an ideal physical activity routine.

• Cardiovascular exercise (also know as CV or aerobic exercise) this is stuff that you can do for a long time, that makes you puff. So running, cycling, walking, hiking, dancing.
• Anaerobic exercise (stuff that you can’t do for long, short spurts of activity with rests) like jumping exercises, squash, gymnastics, sprint running or cycling or swimming. Anything that is short in duration but of high intensity movement.
• Flexibility – this is how bendy you are, and you can be too bendy! Most of us overuse certain muscle groups by repeatedly doing the same things and this can cause muscle imbalance which can lead to tightness and maybe pain or injury.
• Muscular Strength and Endurance – this is your weighted exercises. Using weights, using body parts to move your body weight (press ups, squats for example) and lifestyle activities that activate the same processes. Physical workers may well build some improved muscle tone as they repeatedly do the same things which they need be strong for.

To have a fully rounded exercise routine a combination of all of these is ideal and whilst 45 minutes isn’t a huge amount of time we do hope to do as much as we can across the board with these exercises over a weekly / monthly basis.

I thought I’d put it into context for you.

• When you are warming up, doing anything much over 20-40 seconds of work is aerobic fitness. So running on the spot, shuttle runs, jump jacks, burpees. Anything that needs you can breathe through whilst doing it is aerobic. It means ‘with oxygen’.
• When we do short bursts like a Tabata workout (20 seconds work, 10 seconds rest) x8 that’s high energy, full effort, short breaks. It’s borderline between anaerobic and aerobic. If you work at full pelt every 20 it’s more likely to be anaerobic. As your aerobic fitness improves you could move into an aerobic state.
• Anaerobic fitness also includes exercises that mean you have to stop when you get breathless and muscles fatigue. So press ups, burpees, squat jumps, squat thrusts (yuk) you get the idea.
• Muscular strength and endurance are moves that mean you’re moving a weight against gravity — and that weight can be you! Press ups, squats, lunges, plank etc. These exercises will build muscle as you continually strive to get better at them.
• Flexibility — comes from moves like Spiderman crawl, frog squats, marching bridge and the stretches at the end.

I’ve not covered what we need to do and why, compound moves, isometric moves, concentric moves or plyometric moves. Ballistic stretching, facilitated stretching, active, passive or static stretching…I’ll save those for later posts.

For now, just realise that each session we do has a mixture of these fitness types to make sure that you are getting the best bang for your buck at every camp.

To find out how to see if FastTrack Fit Camp is for you please email Nia on admin@fasttrack-fitcamp.co.uk and ask for a week for free, to see if it’s me…!