Pathfit

• Wellness is the pursuit of continued growth and balance in the seven dimensions of _. Many people think about "_" in terms of physical health only. The word invokes thoughts of nutrition, exercise, weight management, blood pressure, etc. _, however, is much more than physical health.
• Wellness is currently viewed as 7 dimensions.  

  1. Physical Dimension
  2. Emotional Dimension
  3. Intellectual Dimension
  4. Social Dimension
  5. Spiritual Dimension
  6. Environmental Wellness
  7. Occupational Dimension
• Physical Dimension – encompasses a variety of healthy behaviors including adequate exercise 

  • Exercise daily 
  • Get adequate rest 
  • Use seatbelts, helmets, 
  • Learn to recognize early signs of illness 
  • Eat a variety of healthy foods 
  • Control your meal proportions 
  • Stop smoking and protect yourself against second-hand smoke 
  • Use alcohol in moderation, if at all. 
• 1. Emotional Dimension - Is a dynamic state that fluctuates frequently with your other six dimensions of wellness.  

  • Tune in your thoughts and feelings 
  • Cultivate an optimistic attitude 
  • Seek and provide support 
  • Learn time management skills 
  • Practice stress management techniques 
  • Accept and forgive yourself
• 1. Intellectual Dimension - Encourages creative stimulating mental activities. 

  • Take a course of workshop 
  • Learn ( or perfect a foreign language 
  • Seek out for people who challenge you intellectually 
  • Read 
  • Learn to appreciate art 
• 1. Social Dimension - Refers to our ability to interact in our global community and to live up to the expectation and demands of our personal roles. 

  • Cultivate healthy relationships 
  • Get involved 
  • Contribute to your community 
  • Share your talents and skills 
  • Communicate your thoughts, feelings, and ideas. 
• Spiritual Dimension - involves possessing a set of guiding beliefs, principles, or values that help give direction to one's life.

  • Explore your spiritual core 
  • Spend time alone/meditate regularly 
  • Be inquisitive and curious 
  • Be fully present in everything you do 
  • Listen with your heart and live by your principles 
  • Allow yourself and those around you the freedom to be who they are 
  • See opportunities for growth in the challenges life brings you 
• 1. Environmental Wellness - is an awareness of the unstable state of the earth and the effects of your daily habits on the physical environment.  

  • Stop your junk mail 
  • Conserve water and other resources 
  • Minimize chemical use 
  • Reduce, Reuse, Recycle 
  • Renew your relationship with the earth 
• Occupational Dimension - involves preparing and making use of your gifts, skills, and talents in order to gain purpose, happiness, and enrichment in your life. The development of occupational satisfaction and wellness is related to your attitude about your work.  

  • Explore a variety of career options 
  • Create a vision for your future 
  • Choose a career that suits your personality, interests and talents 
  • Be open to change and learn new skills 
• Physical activity is any deliberate muscle movement that uses energy. It can be structured exercise — like sports, a gym session, or going for a run — or part of your work, your leisure time, or any other movement you do during your day.
• DIFFERENT TYPES OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY

  • Aerobic
  • Strengthening
  • Flexibility
  • Balance
• Aerobic exercise, also known as cardiovascular or “cardio,” includes anything that gets your breathing and heart rate up. Everyone can benefit from this type of movement, regardless of their age or physical abilities.
• If you can talk and sing during an activity, you’re exercising at a _. While great for any age or fitness level, low intensity exercises can be particularly beneficial for beginners, older adults, people with joint pain, or those recovering from injury. These types of activities can still benefit your health and may help you stick with your physical activity goals.

  Examples:

  • leisurely walking
  • light swimming
  • vacuuming, mopping, and other house-cleaning activities
  • washing the car
  • light gardening
• Moderate intensity activities get your heart pumping. During these activities, you should be able to talk but not sing. 

  Most adults and children can benefit from moderate intensity activities because many of the health benefits of aerobic exercise begin in this range. Older adults or those with a history of health conditions should talk to their doctor about an appropriate intensity level for them. 

  Examples:

  • doing yard work
  • leisurely biking
  • swimming or water aerobics
  • jogging
  • walking quickly
  • dancing
• Vigorous intensity activities

  If you’re out of breath and can only string a few words together at a time, you’re in the vigorous intensity range. Some people prefer this level of physical activity, as it brings the same health benefits in less time. However, if you are new to exercise or if you have any health complications, you may want to speak to your doctor before attempting any vigorous activity.

  Examples:

  • running or biking at a fast pace
  • swimming laps
  • doing heavy yard work, such as prolonged digging or shoveling
  • playing basketball or tennis
  • jumping rope
• STRENGTHENING EXERCISES

  As well as aerobic exercises, it’s also important to include muscle-strengthening exercises in your workout routine. These exercises help maintain muscle and bone mass and are an important part of healthy aging. Women in particular can benefit from strengthening activities, as bone and muscle loss are common during and after menopause. Can be done with or without equipment, in a gym, or at home. There are many different activities that can help strengthen your muscles, so choose which work for you and your lifestyle. 
• FLEXIBILITY EXERCISES

  Adding movements that help with your _ is also important for your overall health. These activities can help prevent injury, reduce body aches, and increase range of motion. 

  Examples:

  • stretching
  • yoga 
  • pilates
  • tai chi
• BALANCE EXERCISES

  Maintaining good balance can help prevent falls and injury in older adults and is important for everyday activities such as walking or climbing stairs.

  Examples:

  • walking heel to toe
  • standing on one foot, then repeating with the other
  • yoga
  • tai chi
  • standing up from a seated position
• The muscular system is composed of specialized cells called muscle fibers. Their predominant function is contractibility. Muscles, attached to bones or internal organs and blood vessels, are responsible for movement. Nearly all movement in the body is the result of muscle contraction.
• WHAT ARE THE 7 MAIN FUNCTIONS OF THE MUSCULAR SYSTEM?

  Functions:

  • Breathing, speaking, and swallowing
  • Digesting food and getting rid of waste
  • Moving, sitting still, and standing up straight
  • Pumping blood through the heart and blood vessels
  • Pushing a baby through the birth canal as muscles in the uterus contract and relax
  • Seeing and hearing
• HOW CAN I KEEP MY MUSCLES HEALTHY?

  To keep your muscles healthy, you should focus on staying healthy overall:

  • Get plenty of exercise
  • Eat right and make smart choices
  • Maintain a healthy weight
  • Rest when you need to
  • Schedule regular screenings
• The Physical Activity Pyramid is a guide that helps adults plan out their physical activity, so it becomes an easy, routine part of their everyday life. It is similar to the food pyramid, with the bottom containing the largest and most important activities for healthy daily living and the top tier containing the least beneficial activities, or the things you should do sparingly. The goal of this is to gradually increase the amount of physical activity you do and decrease your inactive time.
• Physical Activity Pyramid Levels

  Bottom Level –                                               

  • Level 1: Lifestyle Physical Activity

  Middle Levels –                                              

  • Level 2: Active Aerobics                                  
  • Level 3: Active Sports and Recreation

  The Top of the Physical Activity Pyramid

  Level 4: Inactivity
• 7 PRINCIPLES OF EXERCISE AND SPORTS TRAINING

  • INDIVIDUALITY
  • SPECIFICITY
  • PROGRESSION
  • OVERLOAD
  • ADAPTATION
  • RECOVERY
  • REVERSIBILITY
• SPECIFICITY

  Improving your ability in a sport is very specific. If you want to be a great gaelic footballer or hurler, running laps will help your overall conditioning but it won’t develop your skills at kicking/ball striking or improve the power and muscular endurance required to excel in the physical aspects of the game. 
• PROGRESSION

  To reach the roof of your ability, you have to climb the first flight of stairs before you can exit the 20th floor and stare out over the landscape and wallow in victory. You can view this from both a technical skills standpoint as well as from a strength and conditioning standpoint.  In order to progress and complete 6 sets of 5 reps in a strength block you also need to build your foundation and your muscular endurance well enough before even considering such a progression.
• OVERLOAD

  To increase strength and endurance, you need to add new resistance or time/intensity to your efforts. This principle works in concert with progression. For example, to run a 10-kilometer race, athletes need to build up distance over repeated sessions in a reasonable manner in order to improve muscle adaptation as well as improve soft tissue strength/resiliency. Any demanding exercise attempted too soon risks injury. 
• ADAPTATION

  Over time the body becomes accustomed to exercising at a given level. This adaptation results in improved efficiency, less effort and less muscle breakdown at that level. That is why in the days after completing your first gym session of a new season or training block you experience muscle soreness and take an extra day or two to recover. After a few sessions your body and mind begins to adapt and you begin to feel stronger and more powerful and over the course of a block your body has adapted to the stressors that you have placed on it.
• RECOVERY

  The body cannot repair itself without rest and time to recover. Both short periods like hours between multiple sessions in a day and longer periods like days or weeks to recover from a long season are necessary to ensure your body does not suffer from exhaustion or overuse injuries.
• REVERSIBILITY

  If you discontinue application of a particular exercise like running five miles or bench pressing 80 kgs 10 times, you will lose the ability to successfully complete that exercise. Your muscles will atrophy and the cellular adaptations like increased capillaries (blood flow to the muscles) and mitochondria density will reverse. You can slow this rate of loss substantially by conducting a maintenance/reduced program of training during periods where life gets in the way, and is why just about all sports coaches ask their athletes to stay active in the offseason.
• 10 WAYS TO TEST YOUR FITNESS

  1. Resting Heart Rate
  2. Push-Ups
  3. Head Turning
  4. 12 - Minute Walk/Run
  5. Plank
  6. Loop-The-Loop
  7. Wet Footprint Test
  8. Vertical Jump
  9. Waist-To-Hip Ratio
  10. Wall Sit
• Resting Heart Rate – To Assess Aerobic Fitness

  Counting the number of beats of your RHR is a useful way of indicating your fitness progress. It should reduce as your aerobic fitness improves. Your __ (RHR) represents the number of times your heart beats each minute when you are at rest. Since a strong cardiovascular system allows your heart to pump more blood with every beat, a lower RHR tends to correspond with higher aerobic fitness. Some athletes have recorded a RHR of 40.
•  Push-Ups – To Assess Upper-Body Muscular Endurance

  a great indicator of your upper body strength and the progress of your muscle building exercise. Technically, this test measures muscular endurance rather than pure strength, as it is based on how many you can do in a fixed period of time rather than how much weight you can lift – but it is still a respectable measure of upper-body strength. _ challenge the chest, shoulder and upper arm muscles – and require good core stability.
• Head Turning – To Assess Neck Flexibility

  Testing the flexibility of your neck will tell you how much more stretching and mobilizing exercise you need to do to fully protect it from feeling tight. The neck is the most mobile part of the spine – or at least it should be! Often the neck gets tight on one side due to favoring that side when using the phone, carrying a bag and completing other everyday tasks.
• 12 - Minute Walk/Run – To Assess Cardio Capacity

  Kenneth Cooper – the man credited for inventing ‘aerobics’ – developed his ‘Cooper Test’ in the 1960s and the method is still widely used to measure cardiovascular fitness. The test is mainly the important thing is to maintain a steady pace, rather than go hell for leather for three minutes and then crawl for the remaining nine. Cooper’s results are based on a mixed gender sample of thousands of people
• Kenneth Cooper – the man credited for inventing ‘aerobics’ – developed his ‘Cooper Test’ in the 1960s and the method is still widely used to measure cardiovascular fitness.
• Plank – To Assess Core Stability

  You’ve almost certainly heard of core stability (the strength and function of the deep stabilizing muscles of the trunk) – but how is yours? ‘The plank’ will give you the answer, as it is a position that you will find difficult to hold if your core stability is poor. Simply practicing this exercise movement will soon get your core stabilizers firing.
• Loop-The-Loop – To Assess Shoulder Mobility

  Hours working at a computer, surfing the net, watching TV, driving or simply sitting with poor posture can cause the shoulders to tighten up and the joints to lose mobility. The loop-the-loop exercise test assesses your shoulder mobility in all directions.
• Wet Footprint Test – To Assess Foot Strike Pattern

  Words like pronation and motion control are bandied around freely in running and fitness circles, but instead of forking out for a full-scale gait analysis, an easy and more cost effective way to test your type of foot and foot strike pattern you have is to carry out the wet footprint test yourself.
• Vertical Jump – To Assess Explosive Power

  Power is the ability to exert a force quickly. It’s what gets sprinters off the blocks and basketballers shooting hoops. To exert power, all your muscle fibers have to be recruited, so people with lots of endurance, but less strength, are often quite poor at it.