Cardiovascular and Muscular Fitness

Individual health is something that we must focus on today more than people have had to in the past due to changes in society that have made movement less necessary and important in our day to day lives. Heart disease, obesity, and sedentary lifestyles are growing at an alarming rate within our society and are some of the leading causes of death in the United States today. Due to these growing issues, it is important to know how to combat each of these issues with different exercise regimens and focuses. Different individuals have different body types and therefore have different needs and focuses to reach their individual fitness goals. For this assignment, we will be focusing on muscular fitness versus cardiovascular fitness, and the benefits they have on different body types. While there are misconceptions that muscular and cardiovascular fitness are similar exercise programs, they actually contain very different processes and outcomes to obtain the goals a person wants to achieve.

Muscular Fitness: This type of fitness focuses on the ability of muscles within our body to contract continuously without becoming fatigued. For a person to improve their muscular fitness, they should focus on weightlifting and the use of machines that replicate muscle contractions. This type of fitness also includes muscular endurance, which is the ability of the muscles to perform a contraction numerous times compared to one max lift. Muscular fitness is important to those with weaker muscles to support the ligaments and skeletal system that are connected by our muscle groups. 

Cardiovascular Fitness: This is the ability of the heart, lungs, and blood-cells to provide oxygen rich blood to muscles in our body that are being worked and the ability of those muscles to use that oxygen to to produce energy for movement. For someone to improve their cardiovascular fitness, they should focus on exercises that involve prolonged bouts of exercise that increases breathing and heart rates, such as running or sports that involve movement, or exercise equipment like treadmills, stair masters and ellipticals. Cardiovascular fitness is important to those with limited cardiovascular health to prevent cardiovascular related issues such as heart disease and blood flow issues.