Lesson Three
COMPONENTS OF FITNESS
COMPONENTS OF FITNESS
Health-related fitness deals with improving your overall health and how good you feel (wellness). The
activities you can do to improve this type of fitness include the following:
üCardiorespiratory endurance - activities
involve rhythmic, repeated, and continuous
movements of large muscle groups; Improves
fitness of the heart, lungs, and muscles.
üMuscular endurance – ability of muscles to
contract using submaximal force over a period
of time, such as the number of push-ups that
can be done in a minute.
üMuscular strength - the maximal ability of a
muscle to exert force, often measured as the
amount of resistance that can be moved one
time (one-repetition maximum).
üFlexibility – developing and improving how
well you can move your joints (that is, the
range of motion around joints).
Skill-related fitness focuses on increasing specific sports skills for playing soccer, football, swimming,
or other activities. These skills include agility, speed, reaction time, coordination, balance and power.
Although each component of fitness is different, they both relate to each other in some way and it is
difficult to focus on one aspect without it affecting the other. For example, in order to improve balance
and coordination, it is important to focus on
muscular strength and muscular endurance.
TURN & TALK!
üWhy is a warm up an essential piece to
your workout?
üWhy is a cool down an essential piece to
your workout?
üWhy is it important to create a workout
that is accessible for you?
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Lesson Three: Components of Fitness
ACTIVITY:
Create a one-day fitness plan using the template provided below.
WARM UP
Exercise
Set
Rep/duration
Intensity
COMPONENT OF
FITNESS
Set
Rep/duration
Intensity
COMPONENT OF
FITNESS
Set
Rep/duration
Intensity
COMPONENT OF
FITNESS
ACTIVITY
Exercise
COOL DOWN
Exercise
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Lesson Three: Components of Fitness
KEY CONCEPTS:
HEALTH-RELATED FITNESS
SKILL-RELATED FITNESS
FITT TIP! Use the one-day fitness
plan to help create your personal
fitness goals!
EXIT TICKET
1. What areas of health-related fitness does your one-day Fitness Plan
address and why? ______________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
2. How does your warm up directly relate to your main physical activity
exercises?_____________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
3. What skill-related fitness components does your plan address and
how does that relate to your selected physical activity?______________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
4. What do you believe you can do to extend your one-day Fitness Plan
to show growth over a two-week period? _________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
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15
One-on-One
WITH COACH MIKE CLARK
What is the importance of dynamic and static
stretching?
“Dynamic stretches are important
components of warming up before
your activity. Static stretches are important after you’ve done
extremely vigorous activity to help cool down so you don’t
get sore.”
COACH CLARK
Which position group would you say has the
most unique warm up regimen before a game?
“The offensive line pregame routine includes a medicine ball
throw; I would say that’s probably the most unique thing. We like
to call those ‘Explosive Med Ball Throws.’ A lot of people call
that a workout but for those guys it’s a warm up.”
What are a few benefits of getting and staying
active at an early age?
MIKE CLARK
“Ultimately, developing the habit of staying active is probably
most important. Your sleep pattern will get better. You will
Head Strength & Conditioning Coach,
be more emotionally stable. You will learn quicker. You will
Washington Redskins
have a better memory. Your skin will look cleaner, better. Your
propensity for high blood pressure and other health related issues will go way down. Muscular strength,
cardiovascular strength and endurance, body composition, bone density and ligament density all improve.”
What is one challenge you’ve noticed with today’s generation regarding physical
activity?
“Kids need the chance to just go out, be physically active and play. Opportunities for play have
become limited. What I’ve seen in our training of the elite athlete is that we have to create activities
to mimic some of the development, what we used to call ‘development play’, because a lot of them
aren’t getting that growing up. There’s just a big difference in the physical activity that kids are
getting today, compared to previous generations.”
What is an effective way for youth to get active?
“Get together with two or three friends every day and choose a different activity to do each day. If
one of the things is taking a hike, that’s fine. If one of them is running up flights of stairs, that’s fine.
Anything to get moving is great, but don’t always do the same thing. We need aerobic conditioning,
anaerobic conditioning and resistance conditioning. I say you have to do at least 60 minutes of
vigorous exercise each day.”
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