Definitions of health and fitness

Health is a state of total mental, physical and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity.

Fitness is the ability to meet the demands of the environment.

The difference can be illustrated by athletes who over-train their bodies and weaken their immune system that makes them more susceptible to illness. Being fit may not help you live longer, but it can make you feel healthier, mentally and physically, for as long as you do live.

When you are training for a particular sport, you must ensure that you practice the skills of that sport and follow a fitness regime that is specific to that sport. Physical fitness can be divided into two groups, health-related and skill-related fitness.

 

Pair or group work.

Think of an example that could describe someone who is mentally healthy.

Think of an example that could describe someone who is physically healthy.

Think of a word that could describe social well-being.

Types of fitness: health-related

Health related fitness is what everyone should have whether they play a sport or not. Keeping the body fit for health incorporates the following components:

Cardiovascular fitness
Requires the heart and blood vessels to supply the working muscles with oxygen for long periods of time.

Strength
Is normally measured by the amount of weight the muscles can lift, or applying a force against a resistance.

Flexibility
Is an important part of fitness that we need to keep into our old age. Babies have a natural suppleness and can suck their toes (not that as a teenager you would probably want to do this still), we lose flexibility as we grow older. We should always remember to warm up before competition to stretch our muscles and tendons.

Muscular endurance

Is the ability of the muscle to work for long periods of time without tiring. A marathon runner is an extreme case of a person who has muscular endurance in the leg muscles (Hamstrings and Gastrocnemius in particular).

 

Pair or group work.

Think of some types of training or activity you have done to improve health related fitness

 

 

 

Types of fitness: skill-related

Agility

Is the ability to change the direction of the body quickly. Goalkeepers and gymnasts are good examples of people who have this ability.

Speed

Is the ability to perform a movement or cover a distance in a short period of time. It is not just leg speed, that a sprinter would have, but athletes throwing a javelin require arm speed as well.

Reaction time

Is the time it takes to respond to a stimulus. The stimulus could be a starting pistol, or a ball being returned over the net in tennis, or a goalkeeper moving to get her body in line with the ball to save a shot in hockey, or a slip fielder catching a ball. In a car, the driver is reacting all the time to different stimuli and poor reaction time could lead to a crash.

Balance

Is the ability to keep upright while you are standing still or moving. We naturally think of gymnasts balancing on their hands or on a beam, but we all have to balance when we are standing or riding a bike. In football, when we are dribbling a ball, an opponent may shoulder charge us. We need to shift our body weight to prevent us falling over. We have all tripped up; and to stop ourselves falling over we have to move our centre of gravity (centre of mass), quickly.

Power

In simple terms this is "strength x speed" or doing strength movements quickly. A shot putter uses power when moving a shot from his/her neck. A high jumper needs power in his/her legs to lift their body, vertically, over the bar. A weight lifter powers the bar up over his head.

Co-ordination

Is the ability to use different senses and body parts together. Hand/eye co-ordination is needed when hitting a moving ball in tennis, cricket and baseball. Foot/eye co-ordination is needed when volleying a football.


Pair and group work

In your football lesson last week describe how each of these types of fitness affected your performance, either positively or negatively.


Body Fat

Another facet of health is maintaining a good body fat percentage. It can be difficult to reach a good level of fitness in the above areas if you are carrying extra weight. It can also be difficult to reach a good level of fitness if your body is underweight, not storing enough energy to keep you going. Being underweight can also mean that the body does not build muscle tone, and can cause joint injuries as fat pads cushion the joints. You can measure, with skinfold calipers, the amount of our body weight which is fat.

We all differ in shape and size, but the average acceptable body fat percentage for a male is 15%, and for a woman 25%. That means that if a woman weighs 60kgs, then 15kgs of her body weight should be fat. A woman naturally has more body fat than a man to help her body during pregnancy.

Keeping body fat under control can be very difficult for a lot of people, and fortunes are made devising new "diets" because more people are overweight in this country than ever before. There is also a fear of fat that is causing some people, women and girls especially, to stay dangerously underweight. The only way to stay an appropriate weight is to keep a balance between food intake and the calories we burn.

 

Pair or group work

Think of some potential disadvantages of carrying extra weight.

Think of some potential disadvantages of being underweight.

 

 

Attitude

Another aspect of skill-related fitness, and indeed of health-related fitness as well, is attitude. A good mental attitude will help the body achieve high levels of fitness. If a person has decided that they're "not sporty", then they're going to have a difficult time working past that ingrained attitude to achieve even basic fitness for health!

 

Pair or group work

Think of successful sportsmen with a good mental attitude.

Can you think of any who could do better with a better mental attitude?

What is your attitude to sport?

How would you approach a gruelling cross-country run?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Classifying muscles

The muscles in the body can be divided into three distinct groups:

Voluntary muscles

Voluntary muscles are attached to the skeleton and move the bones at joints when the voluntary muscles contract and relax. Our brain sends messages to the muscle through the central nervous system when we consciously decide that we want the muscle to contract. Voluntary muscles allow us to walk, throw a ball, grip a pen, play the piano, in fact any action where the skeleton is moved.

Voluntary muscles also contract to keep the body stable when we are sitting and standing. The muscles are always in a state of slight tension. This state is called muscle tone.

 

Involuntary (Smooth) muscle

These muscles are found in the walls of our internal organs. Their contraction is not under our conscious control. We have involuntary muscles in the eyes, diaphragm, intestines, blood vessels, bladder and the stomach. It is sometimes called smooth muscle because it lacks the characteristic stripes that are apparent on the above diagram. It is these muscles which line the walls of veins to push blood back to the heart from the lower body. These muscles line the uterus and are used during childbirth.

Cardiac muscle

This involuntary muscle is found only in the walls of the heart. Cardiac muscle contracts the heart to pump the blood through it. The average heart rate is 72 bpm (beats per minute), but the heart can increase this when extra demands are placed upon it - for example, when we are exercising. It is different from other involuntary muscles in that it contracts rhythmically. When the heart muscles do not contract in rhythm, it results in a condition called arrhythmia. We can tone cardiac muscle through regular exercise.

 

Pair or group work

Find muscles in your body that you will use in today’s soccer session.

Try working out your heart rate per minute.

 

 

 

 

 

How muscles attach

Tendons join voluntary muscles to the skeleton. Tendons grow into the periosteum, the outer covering of the bone. When the muscle contracts, the tendon pulls on the bone it is attached to and moves the bone.

Each muscle has an origin and an insertion.

The origin is where the tendon of a muscle is anchored to a fixed point on the skeleton. The bicep has two origins: the top of the scapula and the glenoid cavity.

 

 

The insertion is where the tendon is attached to the bone we want to move. The bicep's insertion is near the elbow in the radius.

Therefore, when the bicep muscle contracts, the arm is flexed at the elbow because the radius bone is pulled closer to the shoulder. So how does the arm straighten (extend) again? Voluntary muscles work in pairs. They are called antagonistic muscles. The antagonistic muscle to the bicep is the tricep. When the bicep contracts, the tricep relaxes and vice versa.

The origins of the tricep are in the shoulder, and two places on the humerus, and the insertion is in the ulna. When the tricep contracts, it pulls its insertion in the ulna closer to the shoulder.

Another example of antagonistic muscles are quadriceps and hamstring muscles in the leg.

Pair and group work

Locate the muscles, bones and joints in your own arm.

Feel the effect of antagonist muscles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Personal Hygene

Take Responsibility
It may be surprising, but a lot of teens still don't think about whether they're dirty or smelly. If they haven't ever been taught the simple and fairly obvious rules of looking after themselves, they may not be the most hygienic kids in the school - and certainly not the most popular in the close quarters of assembly!

Sweating
We sweat when our body temperature rises to 37.5 degrees Celsius (that's 0.5 degrees above normal). Water, in the form of sweat, evaporates from the skin taking the heat with it. Without this process, our bodies would overheat and we would eventually collapse from heat exhaustion. This has happened to Marathon runners who have competed in countries with very humid climates where there is so much water vapour in the air, sweat will not evaporate. The water beads on the skin and the runner's body overheats.

Rule 1 - Take your kit home
Admit it. We've all done it. We've all put a sweaty sports kit back into our lockers and left it for as long as a week. Some people have never been seen taking it home for washing! It shouldn't be hard to sniff out the guilty parties. You should take home anything that is damp after use. This includes: socks, towels, tee shirts, shorts, underwear and shoes.

Rule 2 – Shower
Unless you're built like Brad Pitt or Elle Macpherson, you might feel a little embarrassed about getting in the showers after PE. You decide. Is it more embarrassing to have a quick five minute wash, or to smell like a ripe Camembert for the rest of the day? Body odour is caused by bacteria on the skin, and needs to be washed off with soap! A rinse won't get rid of it!

If you've been out playing a winter sport in the mud, you've got to wash it off before putting your school clothes back on. It seems obvious, but when you're running late it can be forgotten!

Rule 3 - Dry, dry, dry

Water breeds bacteria. Bacteria causes rot. This is what causes smelly old trainer syndrome, or that tell-tale musty gym kit smell. Bacteria and fungus can form on your body or on your clothes in different ways. For example:

On your clothes: mildew and body odour. On your body: athlete’s foot, verrucae, more body odour. Bacteria and fungus love to grow in dark, warm, damp places like shoes - whether they're left in a locker, or on your feet. If you're not wearing socks with your sports shoes, the moisture will stay in shoe rather than be absorbed into socks which are washed and dried to kill the bacteria. It also loves your armpits and other regions of the body where moisture can not evaporate.