What fitness component is the ability of the muscles to exert maximum force in a single effort?

5 Components of Physical Fitness

Physical fitness is the ability to function effectively throughout your workday, perform your usual other activities and still have enough energy left over to handle any extra stresses or emergencies which may arise.

The components of physical fitness are:

Cardiorespiratory (CR) endurance - the efficiency with which the body delivers oxygen and nutrients needed for muscular activity and transports waste products from the cells.

Muscular strength - the greatest amount of force a muscle or muscle group can exert in a single effort.

Muscular endurance - the ability of a muscle or muscle group to perform repeated movements with a sub-maximal force for extended periods of times.

Flexibility - the ability to move the joints or any group of joints through an entire, normal range of motion.

Body composition - the percentage of body fat a person has in comparison to his or her total body mass.

Improving the first three components of fitness listed above will have a positive impact on body composition and will result in less fat. Excessive body fat detracts from the other fitness components, reduces performance, detracts from appearance, and negatively affects your health.

Factors such as speed, agility, muscle power, eye-hand coordination, and eye-foot coordination are classified as components of "motor" fitness. These factors most affect your athletic ability. Appropriate training can improve these factors within the limits of your potential. A sensible weight loss and fitness program seeks to improve or maintain all the components of physical and motor fitness through sound, progressive, mission specific physical training.

Principles of Exercise

Adherence to certain basic exercise principles is important for developing an effective program. The same principles of exercise apply to everyone at all levels of physical training, from the Olympic-caliber athlete to the weekend jogger.

These basic principles of exercise must be followed.

Regularity

To achieve a training effect, you must exercise often. You should exercise each of the first four fitness components at least three times a week. Infrequent exercise can do more harm than good. Regularity is also important in resting, sleeping, and following a sensible diet.

Progression

The intensity (how hard) and/or duration (how long) of exercise must gradually increase to improve the level of fitness.

Balance

To be effective, a program should include activities that address all the fitness components, since overemphasizing any one of them may hurt the others.

Variety

Providing a variety of activities reduces boredom and increases motivation and progress.

Specificity

Training must be geared toward specific goals. For example, people become better runners if their training emphasizes running. Although swimming is great exercise, it does not improve a 2-mile-run time as much as a running program does.

Recovery

A hard day of training for a given component of fitness should be followed by an easier training day or rest day for that component and/or muscle group(s) to help permit recovery. Another way to allow recovery is to alternate the muscle groups exercised every other day, especially when training for strength and/or muscle endurance.

Overload

The work load of each exercise session must exceed the normal demands placed on the body in order to bring about a training effect.

Final Thoughts

One of the best types of exercise we have discovered that encompasses the five components of physical fitness is Martial Movement™ training like offered at the Port Credit Academy of Martial Arts in South Mississauga. Karate, Kardio Kicks (Fitness Kickboxing) and Tai Chi all complement each other in a well-rounded blend of Martial Arts training.

This is an excerpt from Dancer Wellness With Web Resource by Mary Virginia Wilmerding & Donna Krasnow.

Muscular strength is the ability to exert maximal force in one single contraction, such as lifting a weight that you could lift only once before needing a short break. Muscular power refers to a great force production over a short period of time, such as in fast leg kicks and explosive jumping. Muscular endurance is when less force is sustained over a longer period of time such as in gallops, skips, pliés, and swings. Dancers often confuse endurance with strength, so it is sometimes useful to think of endurance as continuous and strength as maximal.

This dancer displays muscular strength as well as flexibility in this difficult balance.
CPRowe Photography 2012, University of Utah, Modern Dance.

In dance you are required to jump, catch partners, move down onto the floor and up out of the floor at fast speeds, and perform other explosive movements. These movements require a level of muscular strength and power. While technique classes can improve muscular strength and power, it is not necessarily the main goal. Some current dance technique classes are increasingly asymmetrical (practicing coordination on one side only) and are more focused on stylistic and artistic aspects of dancing rather than adequate repetitions to develop strength, power, and endurance. Therefore, you should do supplementary exercises for muscular strength, power, and endurance outside of your dance technique classes. Without a certain baseline of these important abilities, you are more likely to incur musculoskeletal imbalances and injuries. Injuries developed from muscular imbalances or from lack of core strength in large, explosive movements are common.

You need a good level of muscular strength, power, and endurance in order to effectively perform a variety of dance movements such as lifts, jumps, and explosive movements. An adequate level of muscular strength, power, and endurance not only assists the technical and aesthetic aspects of performance, it can also minimize the risk of injury by increasing joint stabilization and improving bone health.

A common method of strength training is with resistance machines or free weights, such as dumbbells. Even more common for dancers is using exercise bands or stretchy surgical tubing as resistance. You can also do strength training using your own body weight, such as in push-ups and leg lunges. You should exercise larger muscle groups before smaller ones, because smaller ones fatigue more quickly. It is important to alternate muscle groups to allow for recovery before performing another exercise on the same muscle group. For muscular strength gains, you should exercise a muscle through its full range of motion for 8 to 12 repetitions. The amount of weight or resistance should be challenging; after the set, you should feel muscular fatigue. Young teens or dancers rehabilitating from an injury should use lower weight or resistance and higher numbers of repetitions. For exercises targeting muscular power, remember to perform fast repetitions. You can repeat exercises two or three times in a given conditioning sequence.

When exercising for muscle strength, you should isolate the muscles to be strengthened; carry out the correct motion fully in a smooth and controlled manner without other muscles compensating. People tend to compensate when they are tired, which is when other muscles take over for the fatigued muscles. When you are exercising, be mindful of this tendency and make adjustments in resistance in order to isolate the appropriate muscles. Whenever possible, exercise a joint through its full range of motion so as to work the entire muscle and not to use too much weight or resistance during the end of a motion.

Apply the principle of specificity by replicating movement patterns of dance as closely as possible and stressing muscle groups that are most needed in current dance activities. For example, when you are returning to technique class or rehearsals after an ankle sprain, you will need to condition the ankle to be able to jump. It is best for you to incorporate foot exercises that best match the jumping speed and range of motion similar to what occurs in dance jumps. While slow and sustained strengthening exercises, such as work with an exercise band, are recommended, you will benefit from restrengthening the feet with an increase in tempo, coming as close as possible to actual jumping speed and with a similar range of motion.

To realize gains in strength and power, apply the principle of progressive overload. Overload should happen in a gradual and progressive manner whereby intensity, duration, and frequency of the exercises are steadily increased. It is a good idea to begin with an initial 2-week period of high-repetition (15-25 reps) training with low resistance. Following this period, increase load with fewer (8-12) repetitions, allowing the focus of the exercise to shift from endurance to strength. A rest period of 60 to 90 seconds between each set is important, and exercises for the same body area should not be done on successive days. You may not notice results for 5 to 10 weeks, but do not become discouraged; results will occur.

You can train muscular power by incorporating explosive exercises after seeing initial strength gains. Plyometrics training is a form of jump training in which you exert maximal force in short intervals, which has been shown to effectively increase leg power. Usually exercises are quite short but fairly explosive. An example of a plyometrics exercise is 6 to 8 high tuck jumps followed by a rest and then repeated twice more. If progressive overload is applied here, the frequency of the jumps may increase from 3 to 4 bouts and the number of repetitions may increase from 6 to 8 jumps, to 8 to 10 jumps, and so on.

Dance technique classes cannot be solely relied on to provide the conditioning exercises needed to target various components of physical fitness such as muscular strength, power, and endurance. These aspects of conditioning allow you to perform dance movements such as jumping, catching a partner, moving down onto the floor and up from the floor at fast speeds, and other explosive movements. It is therefore recommended that you do supplementary exercises for these aspects of conditioning outside of dance technique classes.

Learn more about Dancer Wellness.

What is the maximum force that can be exerted in a single effort?

Which of the following fitness components refers to the ability of the muscles to exert effort in a brief duration?

What fitness component is the ability of the muscle?

What health related component refers to the amount of force that muscles can exert?