Maintaining a healthy lifestyle through physical exercise is crucial since it helps control chronic diseases and reduce early mortality. The 2018 physical activity directives for American adults recommend combining moderate and intense aerobic workouts with major muscle group strengthening activities. The suggestion is for adults to perform 150–300 minutes of moderate-intensity workouts or 75–150 minutes of high-intensity workouts every week, or an equivalent mix of both. Furthermore, strength training should be added at least twice a week for enhanced health benefits.
Three factors contribute to health-related fitness: cardiovascular health, muscular strength, and anaerobic power. Cardiovascular fitness assesses the efficiency of the respiratory and circulatory systems in providing oxygen to the skeletal muscle during physical activity. VO2 max, a measurement for cardiorespiratory fitness, indicates the body’s maximum capacity to consume oxygen during intense physical activity. High VO2 max scores signify an increased ability to supply and use oxygen, thereby enhancing a person’s aerobic activity intensity for extended durations. A low VO2 max is a sign of potential cardiovascular health issues and potential death risks in adults.
Muscular strength relates to the body’s ability to apply sufficient force against external resistance to perform tasks and sustain mobility. Anaerobic activity represents physical activities that generate energy from glucose breakdown without using oxygen. Such activities measure the body’s ability to perform high-intensity movements over a short period. Improving cardiovascular health, muscular strength, and anaerobic power may enhance a person’s overall fitness level.
Interestingly, the responsiveness to exercise training dramatically varies among individuals. According to Dr. Bernd Wolfarth of the Department of Sports Medicine at Humboldt University, factors such as environment and genetics contribute to trainability and fitness phenotypes. Furthermore, certain genes, known as candidate genes, may influence successful responses to specific exercise training types due to their influence on energy pathways, metabolism, storage, and cell growth.
The Cambridge Centre for Sport and Exercise Sciences conducted research to identify specific alleles of candidate genes related to exercise response in untrained participants. The study assessed whether these genes played a role in exercise training response variations among participants and concluded that individual genetic makeups could impact an individual’s response to exercise. The future of fitness regimes could be tailored to a person’s genetic makeup based on the results of upcoming research.
The top full-body workouts include squats, burpees, lunges, and cycling, targeting multiple muscle groups simultaneously. The optimal pairing of muscle groups for workouts and understanding how to work out when sore could further enhance exercise effectiveness. Furthermore, understanding conditions such as muscle dysmorphia and relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S) is essential for maintaining overall health.