MUSCULAR appearance is the fitness goal of many a man. Bodybuilding adequately provides musculoskeletal strength, but not the other two essential components of fitness — cardio-respiratory health and flexibility.

A person carrying out daily tasks with alertness and vigour, without undue fatigue, can be considered healthy if s/he has enough energy left to enjoy leisure-time activities and to meet unforeseen emergencies.

What the heavy weightlifters miss here is that being healthy includes more than just the appearance. Anyone who has interactions with professional bodybuilders, at least in Pakistan, can attest to the fact that most of these massive fellows, if not all of them, cannot run fast or long, climb stairs quickly or even touch any part of their upper back. Although the body composition, amount of fat, muscles and bones, is a predictor of physical fitness, that is not the whole truth.

There are three basic components of physical fitness — musculoskeletal fitness, cardio-respiratory fitness, and flexibility. Depending on the goals, bodybuilding only caters to the musculoskeletal fitness by giving you the muscle strength and endurance.

Cardio-respiratory fitness means your heart and lungs can adequately supply nutrients and oxygen for various tasks. Running, brisk walking and climbing stairs train your circulatory system — heart and lungs — to do its job.

The often-ignored component of physical fitness is flexibility. You are sufficiently flexible if you can move your joints through their respective complete range of motion.

An example of flexibility would be the ability to wash most of your upper back yourself in shower.

The media shapes the reality around us. Wrestling, weightlifting and bodybuilding have set the criterion of ‘real’ strength for men as being highly muscular.

Although exercises and the accompanying nutrition to achieve these goals do make a person healthy, there is much more to health than mere musculoskeletal fitness. One must not forget the cardio-respiratory and flexibility aspects of health.

Jamshed Arslan
Karachi

Published in Dawn, November 19th, 2021