Personal Fitness - How to get lean, fit and healthy

Personal fitness is an admirable goal to strive for. It holds in numerous health benefits and it can also make you look and feel great. But if it where that easy to achieve we all would be at our personal fitness peak.

What makes it so difficult is knowing what personal fitness involves, how to achieve it and how to make sure that you stay motivated so that you achieve your own personal fitness goals. To help you achieve your goals, we will look at the definition of personal fitness, the foundations of personal fitness, how you can take responsibility for your own fitness development and other great ways that you can makes sure that you achieve your personal fitness goals. Let start!

What Is Personal Fitness? - Personal Fitness Definition

To help one understand your own fitness, it will help to have a look at the definition of personal fitness.

Personal fitness is a combination of muscular and cardiovascular fitness. Let's have a look at the different components in more detail:

• Cardiovascular fitness: The definition of cardiovascular fitness is the ability of a person to extract oxygen from the air to be transferred into the blood and pumped via the heart to the muscles to be used to oxidize fat and carbohydrates.
• Muscular fitness: Muscular fitness is a combination of strength, muscular endurance and flexibility. When you work on improving your muscular fitness levels, you will increase your lean muscle mass and this will increase your fat burning ability.

What Are The Foundations Of Personal Fitness?

The foundations of personal fitness can be found in a combination of cardio exercise and also weight training. You should aim to improve your power, speed, agility and balance.

How Can I Be Responsible For My Own Personal Fitness?

You don't need a personal fitness trainer to help you achieve your fitness goals. With a little planning and smart tips, you can turn into your very own personal trainer. There are 2 tools that you need to help you get the job done:

• Your own personal fitness goals
• A personal fitness journal to record your experiences.

Let's have a look at what this involves:

Set up your own personal fitness goals

• Do the right tests - The first step to setting up your own personal fitness goals is to assess where you currently are with regards to fitness. There are various tests you can take to find out how fit or unfit you really are. Some of them include: cardiovascular fitness test, muscular strength test, BMI, waist to hip ratio and flexibility tests. This will give you a base for your goals.
• Evaluate the results of those test - Have a look at what it means and decide what it would take to improve it. We will look at ways to improve your readings in a moment.
• Set some smart goals - According to your tests you would know if you need to lose a few pounds or if you just need to work on your overall fitness. Make sure that your goals are smart - specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bounded.

Keep a personal fitness journal

The next step would involve keeping a personal fitness journal. Make sure to write down your starting measurements and test results and weight.

Also, write your fitness goals in this journal and use the journal as a tool to track your progress - if you met all your exercise appointments, and how you are getting fitter. Keep logs of your weights with weight training as the weeks progress and also how you felt after each cardio session.

Keeping such a journal will surely motivates you and will ensure that you keep yourself responsible for your own fitness.

What Personal Fitness Products Can Help Me Improve My Fitness Levels?

If you are going to train on your own, you will need to buy a few pieces to set up your perfect home gym. If you use a health club, they will be bound to have a few of the following personal fitness products to help you along the way:

• Weights - Most gyms have static dumbell weights in all the different weight loads, If you are going to exercise on your own, I would recommend that you buy a few adjustable dumbbell weights
• Cardio equipment - If you have access to gym you can use the treadmill, elliptical machines, steppers or rowing machines. If you are exercising from home a jumping rope or the open road to jog on is your best bet.
• Pilates - This is one of the best exercise you can do to improve your core strength, flexibility and muscle tone. The Daisy Funetes Pilates game can be used with your Wii. If you need more of a traditional Pilates workout, have a look at the Pilates band

What Other Personal Fitness Classes Is There To Try Out?

There are many ways of benefiting from a personal fitness class. Lots of people offer classes from their home and most health clubs also have fun classes to attend. You can also buy a few workout DVD's to workout at home. Some of these classes include:

• Aerobics - low impact, high-lo, body conditioning
• Stepping classes
• Kick-boxing
• Tae-Bo
• Pilates classes

How Can A Personal Fitness Trainer Help Me Achieve My Goals?

If you want to go the personal trainer route, he/she can help you to:

• Keep track of your fitness goals and help you achieve them
• To motivate you to push further and harder
• She can also help you to get the basics right so that you don't hurt yourself.
• She can also help you to not hurt/overextend yourself

Where Can I Find Personal Fitness Trainers?

Most gyms and health clubs have personal fitness trainers you can hire. Make sure that they hold a personal fitness certification.

Where Can I Find An Online Personal Fitness Program?

Fitness magazine has a video tool where you can make your own workout with the help of their videos and they can also have great tools to help you achieve your fitness goals.

Conclusion

The power of your own personal fitness lies in your own hands. You can be fit, healthy and in the best shape of your life. You just need to find your own personal motivators (your reasons for wanting to be fit) and remind yourself of it each day.

Setting personal fitness goals and keeping a personal fitness journal will also help. You can be in the best shape of your life, you just have to make it happen yourself. It is possible - just believe in yourself and never give up!