Many fear to do weight training as they feel they will bulk up with big muscles and end up looking like a body builder. But there is a difference between body building and weight training.
Bodybuilding is the process of maximising muscle size through the combination of progressive weight training and a high-protein intake concept. This is called ‘isolation training’, and usually does not involve functional type exercises.
The exercises involve heavy resistance, sitting or lying on an equipment and training each muscle group individually. Just one or two muscle groups are selected to train on a day and the training duration could extend to two hours.
Day one can involve chest and biceps, day two can be back and triceps, day three legs and abdomen…and so on.
The combination of muscle groups could vary depending on one’s preference. And each muscle group involves four to five sets of different exercises in one session.
The objective is to train the muscle in various angles to get better muscular definition and to progressively bulk it up by increasing the intensity. The exercised muscles then need three to four days to completely recover after a heavy training session.
Someone who engages in this activity is referred to as a bodybuilder. Finally, on the competition day, bodybuilders display their physiques on a stage to a panel of judges, who assign points based on their aesthetic appearance, symmetry, size, posing style and low fat levels in the body. The muscle groups are revealed through a combination of drastic fat loss, tanning and oils applied on the skin which combined with lighting make the definition of the muscle group more distinct.
The rippled look and very low levels of body fat achieved comes by dehydrating the body by drastically reducing water and salt (sodium) intake and starvation for a few days before the competition.
Improving flexibility, stability, strength and endurance and cardio vascular conditioning is not an objective for a bodybuilder, whereas it is for one who follows a physical fitness programme. All that matters to the body builders is how on the competition day they impress the judges on the stage.
Understanding Fitness A physical fitness programme, on the other hand, helps you improve or maintain your health. You are physically fit if you can perform everyday tasks easily and have plenty of energy left over for leisure activities and physically demanding emergency situations. Typically, fit individuals have superior endurance and lower stress levels when compared to unfit individuals.
Basic factors that influence your fitness potential include your age, genetic inheritance, gender, eating patterns and level of exercises. A physical fitness programme uses exercise as a means of utilising your ‘innate physical potential’.
Health related Specific components of physical fitness includes cardiovascular endurance, which is your heart and lungs’ ability to deliver oxygen and nutrients efficiently and remove waste products for an extended period of time.
An objective to run a five K in 20 minutes is a fantastic goal to set to achieve excellent cardiovascular endurance. Additional components of fitness include joint and muscle flexibility to attain maximum range of motion at joints to move very fluidly and gracefully. Stretching your muscles improves flexibility.
Muscular strength and endurance describes your ability to use your muscles for repeated or sustained task such as pushing, pulling, lifting, the ability to squat deeply and lunge in different planes comfortably.
If you are able to use your own body weight as a resistance to perform strength training exercises that is a great achievement. And rest assured, you will not bulk up like a bodybuilder.
Agility is another component which denotes the ability to move your body in different directions quickly which challenges your reflex system.
Your physical fitness is also indicated by your body’s ratio of lean muscle mass to fat.
If you play a sport, you should still follow a fitness regime which takes care of all the components of fitness and eventually it will help you in the sport.
For most of us who lead sedentary lives, following a fitness routine programme for life can lower the risk for a number of chronic health conditions.
A fitness routine can be followed life long without any setback, but body-building will need a break and a retirement day.
Bhaskar is a fitness professional. Read more about fitness on his website www.60 minuteworkouts.com
