Improving your fitness level is from being only a question of training

Most people need help explaining what it means to be fit.

Physical fitness is determined by a figure known as VO2 max.

This means the volume of oxygen consumed at maximum effort. The higher the figure, the fitter you are.

But it all depends on the sport. I would like to give you an example. For a field hockey player, 60 is exceptional. But for a professional marathon runner, 60 is bad news.

It's different from the type of muscular quality that we use.

Each sporting discipline has particular characteristics that require different uses of muscle fibers and cardiovascular capacity.

There are three ways to improve your physical condition.

1.       Stimulation through training

Training is the signal that tells your body to adapt.

It's not during exercise that your fitness improves but during rest.

When given in sufficient quantity and not exaggerated, exercise is a physiological stress that sends a signal to the body that says, "Adapt."

And so that's what the body will generally do. But if, with each training session, you want to "push" harder and go further and further into exhaustion, this adaptation won't happen. You'll invest time in training without getting any results.

So, when you stimulate your body through exercise, adaptation takes place at rest. Contrary to what people think, it doesn't happen while exercising.

The aim is not to burn as many calories as possible by training at high intensity. It's to stimulate your body in the heart rate zone that produces the best adaptation to the demand you place on it.

2.       Lose weight

Losing weight means dragging less inert mass. In other words, mass that doesn't produce mechanical work like muscles. The fat stored in your fat cells is inert mass.

By training less inert mass, your physical condition improves.

For every 10 pounds (4.5 kilos) you lose, your fitness improves by 4%. The reverse is also true.

When you build muscle mass, your weight increases, but muscle mass allows you to work and move.

So, gaining weight in muscle mass improves your fitness.

So losing weight helps you improve your fitness, sometimes faster than the training itself.

3.       Nutrition

For your body to adapt, it needs the energy it needs from your diet.

If you're training and not consuming enough calories, you're wasting your time.

You get absolutely nothing out of it because you exhaust your body, you exhaust your muscle fibers, and they become incapable of adapting (improving your physical condition).

In conclusion

Fitness gain combines training, weight loss (when necessary), and adequate nutrition.

Training alone will never produce results commensurate with the time you invest in it.

However, combining these three elements produces far superior results without exhaustion.