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Chapter 13. Nutrition and Physical Activity

The Essential Elements of Physical Fitness

There are 4 essential elements of physical fitness:

  1. Cardiorespiratory fitness
  2. Muscular fitness
  3. Flexibility
  4. Body composition

Cardiorespiratory Fitness

Cardiorespiratory fitness describes the ability of our heart, lungs, and circulation to supply oxygen and nutrients to the working muscles. It is enhanced by aerobic training, which involves activities that increase your heart rate and breathing such as walking, jogging, or biking. Working on this element of physical fitness improves your circulatory system by improving your ability to supply the body’s cells with oxygen and nutrients while removing carbon dioxide and metabolic waste. Aerobic exercise, which can help improve cardiorespiratory fitness, involves exercise lasting more than 2/3 minutes and can include either low- or high-intensity levels. Aerobic exercise increases heart and breathing rates to meet increased demands for oxygen in working muscles. Regular, moderate aerobic activity, about thirty minutes at a time for five days per week, can improve oxygen transport within the body, strengthen the heart and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.[1] Strengthening your heart muscle and increasing the blood volume pumped with each heartbeat will lead to a lower resting heart rate for healthy individuals. Aerobic exercise increases the ability of muscles to use oxygen for energy metabolism and therefore, create ATP.

Aerobic capacity, or VO2 is the most common standard for evaluating cardiorespiratory endurance. VO2 max is your maximal oxygen uptake, and the VO2 max test measures the amount of oxygen (in relation to body weight) that you can use per minute. A participant usually walks or runs on a treadmill or rides a stationary bicycle during this test. The volume and oxygen content of exhaled air is measured to determine oxygen consumption as exercise intensity increases. At some point, the amount of oxygen consumed no longer increases despite increases in exercise intensity. This value of oxygen consumption is referred to as VO2 max, ‘V’ meaning volume, and ‘max’ meaning the maximum amount of oxygen (O2) an individual is capable of utilizing.

 

A woman doing the treadmill VO2 max test
Figure 13.1 VO2 max test.

Muscular Fitness

Muscular fitness includes both, muscular strength and endurance, which are developed and maintained by weight or resistance training. Building muscle mass is not just crucial for athletes and bodybuilders—building muscle strength and endurance is important for children, seniors, and everyone in between. The support provided by your muscles allows you to work, play, and live more efficiently. Strength training not only involves the use of resistance machines, resistance bands or free weights, but it can also involve the use of your own body weight when performing exercises. You do not need to pay for a gym membership or expensive equipment to strengthen your muscles. Homemade weights, such as plastic bottles filled with sand, can work just as well. You can also use your own body weight to do push-ups, leg squats, abdominal crunches, and other exercises to build your muscles. If strength training is performed at least twice a week, it can help improve muscle strength and increase bone strength. Strength training can also help you maintain muscle mass during a weight-loss program.[2]

Flexibility

Flexibility is the range of motion available to your joints. Yoga, tai chi, Pilates, and stretching exercises improve this element of fitness. Stretching improves your range of motion and posture and helps you perform activities that require greater flexibility, such as chores around the house. In addition to working on flexibility, older adults should include balance exercises in their routine. Balance tends to deteriorate with age, which can result in falls and fractures.[3]

Body Composition

Body composition is the proportion of fat and fat-free mass (which includes bones, muscles, and organs) in your body. A healthy and physically fit individual has a greater proportion of muscle and a smaller proportion of fat than an unfit individual of the same weight. Although habitual physical activity can promote a more healthful body composition, other factors like age, gender, genetics, diet, social determinants of health and weight stigma contribute to an individual’s body composition.

Physical Activity Recommendations: Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines

The Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology (CSEP) has outlined physical activity guidelines for all age groups. Adults should get at least 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity each week. In addition to aerobic physical activity, it is recommended that adults perform muscle-strengthening activities on each major muscle group two or three times each week. CSEP also recommends that adults get 7-9 hours of good-quality sleep and limit sedentary behaviour to 8 hours or less per day by breaking up long periods of sitting as often as possible and having no more than 3 hours of recreational screen time per day.  To learn more about these guidelines, view the CSEP 24-Hour Movement Guidelines.

Meeting Physical Activity Guidelines While Hunting

Due to the cumulative effects of modernization and colonization, many Indigenous peoples do not currently meet the 150 minutes per week of moderate-vigorous physical activity recommendations. Researchers have found that cultural land-based activities such as hunting can be used to promote increased physical activity participation among Indigenous peoples. In one study, researchers recruited six middle-aged male hunters of the Esk’etemc Indian Band and recorded their heart rate (HR) and step count on two days of hunting and two days of their daily regimen while living on-reserve, respectively.[4] The results of the study showed that although there were no significant differences in mean HR and average step count between the hunting and living on-reserve days, the time spent engaging in light, moderate, and vigorous activities was two times greater on the hunting days when compared to the on-reserve days.[5] Moreover, the greatest health and fitness benefits were derived from successful hunts, as the strenuous task of handling the animal greatly increases exercise intensity.[6] The results of this study highlight the importance of including culturally appropriate and relevant ways of remaining physically active, such as hunting, in the Canadian Physical Activity Guidelines (CPAG) to increase physical activity participation among diverse cultural groups in Canada.

Ethnicity-Specific Guidelines

South Asian Canadians (SACs) currently make up 25.1% of the total minority population in Canada, establishing them as the largest visible minority group in Canada.[7] The current CSEP 24 hr movement guidelines recommend a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous-intensity aerobic exercise per week. However, these physical activity guidelines largely derive from studies that use White European men as participants, thus limiting their applicability to SACs. In a study conducted by Iliodromiti et al. (2016), researchers found that South Asians have a ‘low-fitness’ phenotype due to their inherently lower cardiorespiratory levels and limited capacity to metabolize fats during exercise. As a result of these genetic variations, researchers have proposed new physical activity guidelines specific to South Asians, which suggest that South Asians would benefit from engaging in an additional 10-15 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise per day.[8] These guidelines suggest that South Asians must engage in a total of 230 minutes of moderate to vigorous-intensity aerobic exercise per week to achieve the same cardiometabolic health improvements as White Europeans engaging in 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous-intensity exercise per week. These ethnicity-specific guidelines further highlight the role of genetic influences in contributing to one’s risk of developing CVD and obesity.

 

Although the physical activity guidelines recommend meeting 230 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise per week, studies have shown that SACs will benefit from engaging in any aerobic exercise program. Typically, physical activity guidelines focus on more traditional forms of physical activity (e.g., jogging, biking etc.,) but it’s possible that more culturally relevant activity can help with physical activity participation. For example, in a study conducted by Lesser et al. (2016), researchers found that a higher percentage of people attended a culturally relevant activity vs. a standard program. For individuals who find the idea of working out at a gym daunting, it may be helpful to opt for culturally relevant ways to remain physically active, especially to increase one’s exercise self-efficacy and adherence. Culturally relevant exercise interventions such as Bhangra have high adherence rates because they promote increased energy levels, lower stress levels, and a friendly social atmosphere.[9]

  1. The American Heart Association Recommendations for Physical Activity in Adults. American Heart Association. Heart.org. http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/HealthyLiving/PhysicalActivity/FitnessBasics/American-Heart-Association-Recommendations-for-Physical-Activity-Infographic_UCM_450754_SubHomePage.jsp. Accessed March 10, 2018. ↵
  2. American College of Sports Medicine. Resistance Training for Health and Fitness. Acsm.org. https://www.acsm.org/docs/brochures/resistance-training.pdf. Accessed March 11, 2018. ↵
  3. Fitness Training: Elements of a Well-Rounded Routine. MayoClinic.com. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/fitness-training/HQ01305. Updated August 10, 2017. ↵
  4. Paul, S., Haynes, E., Rush, K., Te Hiwi, B., Jakobi, J., & Robbins, F. (2024). Hunting can increase physical activity of Indigenous peoples in Canada: Pixem re yecwme’nstut. Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism. https://doi.org/10.1139/apnm-2023-0095 ↵
  5. Paul, S., Haynes, E., Rush, K., Te Hiwi, B., Jakobi, J., & Robbins, F. (2024). Hunting can increase physical activity of Indigenous peoples in Canada: Pixem re yecwme’nstut. Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism. https://doi.org/10.1139/apnm-2023-0095 ↵
  6. Paul, S., Haynes, E., Rush, K., Te Hiwi, B., Jakobi, J., & Robbins, F. (2024). Hunting can increase physical activity of Indigenous peoples in Canada: Pixem re yecwme’nstut. Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism. https://doi.org/10.1139/apnm-2023-0095 ↵
  7. Tharmaratnam, T., Iskandar, M., Doherty, S., D’Urzo, K., Kopalakrishnan, S., Tabobondung, T., Gopee-Ramanan, P., Sivagurunathan, S., & Sivananthan, N. (2018). The Role of Physical Activity Prescription in Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Amongst South Asian Canadians. Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcvm.2018.00165 ↵
  8. Iliodromiti, S., Ghouri, N., Celis-Morales, C., Sattar, N., Lumsden, M., & Gill, J. (2016). Should Physical Activity Recommendations for South Asian Adults Be Ethnicity-Specific? Evidence from a Cross-Sectional Study of South Asian and White European Men and Women. PLoS ONE, 11(8), e0160024. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0160024 ↵
  9. Lesser, I. A., Guenette, J. A., Hoogbruin, A., Mackey, D. C., Singer, J., Gasevic, D., & Lear, S. A. (2016). Association between exercise-induced change in body composition and change in cardiometabolic risk factors in postmenopausal South Asian women. Applied Physiology, Nutrition & Metabolism, 41(9), 931–937. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=s3h&AN=117760908&site=eds-live. ↵

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The Essential Elements of Physical Fitness Copyright © 2022 by Luisa Giles and Komal Dhaliwal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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