Ensuring wellbeing through fitness and exercise
Wellbeing is the state of being comfortable, healthy and happy. It is a person's experience of their life and life circumstances, including things like education, work, social relationships, built and natural environments, security, housing and work-life balance.
Fitness
The ability to meet the demands of the environment. can be defined as 'the ability to meet the demands of the environment' or being able to carry out everyday activities with little fatigue. Fitness relates to how physically demanding life is. Therefore, a person doing an office job requires lower levels of physical fitness than an Olympic athlete. There is an increasing number of people who work in a job that doesn't require a large amount of physical activity. These jobs are described as non-physical or sedentary and would mean the level of fitness required to do them is low. This may lead to more people having a low level of fitness and health levels in society decreasing.
Exercise
Physical activity that helps to keep the body fit. can be defined as 'a form of physical exercise done to improve health or fitness or both'. It is recommended that adults and children follow different activity routines in order to maintain good health and fitness:
Adults - five sessions of thirty minutes activity per week. The activity should be physical enough to cause the adult to breathe more deeply and to begin to sweat.
Children and young people - seven sessions of sixty minutes per week. At least two of these sessions should be of high intensity exercise such as running, jumping or cardiovascular based sports. The seven hours may be spread out over the course of a week.
Children learn a great deal from their parents and therefore it is important that parents present active role models and opportunities for their children. In this context it becomes essential that physical exercise is built into the structure of the typical day. Good examples of this could be walking or cycling to work or to school, taking part in games together in the back garden and participating in active experiences at the weekend such as walking in the countryside or going for a bike ride.