6: Muscular Fitness Flashcards
General Principles of Exercise Prescription (ACSM)
o Intended to assist exercise and health/fitness professionals to develop an individually tailored exercise programme
o Designed to enhance physical fitness, promote health, and ensure safety during exercise
o Appropriate for apparently healthy adults
o Based on application of scientific evidence
o Components of (ACSM) to be addressed include:
– cardiovascular (aerobic) fitness
– muscular strength and endurance
– flexibility
– body composition
FITT-VP principles
Frequency (how often)
Intensity (how hard)
Time (how long)
Type (what mode)
Total Volume (amount)
Rate of Progression
An individually tailored exercise programme should consider:
– individual’s goals
– current fitness/activity level
– physical ability, health status
– available equipment/facilities
– Daily schedule, time demands and psychological factors (e.g. barriers, enjoyment, self-efficacy)
– the FITT-VP principle
Additional Considerations of An individually tailored exercise programme
o Reduce potential for overuse injuries by:
– Variety of exercise modes
– Warm-up, cool-down and stretching
– Begin a new programme at a light-moderate intensity
– Gradual progression of intensity, duration, and frequency of activity
– Proper technique
o Behavioural/psychological strategies to enhance adherence (see chapter 11 of ACSM textbook)
– Setting SMARTER goals, building self-efficacy, overcoming barriers etc to enhance adherence
Improving Muscular Fitness: FITT-VP principles
o Achieved via resistance exercise programme using free weights, machines, body weight etc
o Essential component of exercise programme
o Improve strength and endurance
o Goals of health-related resistance programme
– Make activities of daily living less physiologically stressful
– Manage, reduce, or prevent chronic diseases
– Very important with increasing age
o Principles are intended to improve health and fitness, not for maximally increasing muscular strength/mass.
Frequency of Resistance Exercise
o Each major muscle group should be trained 2 to 3 days/week.
o Allow at least 48 hours between sessions for the same muscle group to allow the muscle group to recover.
o Achieved either by:
– training all muscle groups in the same session (longer sessions, at least 2 times/week)
– a ‘split-routine’ involving training selected muscle groups at each session (shorter sessions, at least 4 days/week e.g. upper body Mon and Thurs, lower body Tues and Fri).
– Different options may help to improve adherence to the resistance training programme
Types of Resistance Exercises
o Free weights, resistance machines, body weight or resistance bands
o Multijoint or compound exercises that involve more than one muscle group and/or single joint exercises targeting major muscle groups
o Include exercises that target opposing muscle groups (i.e. agonist and antagonist muscles), to avoid creating muscle imbalances that may lead to injury.
Resistance Machines Advantages
– Safe
– Convenient
– Don’t require spotters
– Provide variable resistance
– Require less skill
– Easy to move from one exercise to next
– Easy isolation of individual muscle
– groups but muscle imbalances can develop
– Easy isolation of individual muscle groups but muscle imbalances can develop
Resistance Machines disadvantages
– Limited availability
– Limited number of exercises
Free Weights advantages
– Allows dynamic movements
– Allows individual to develop control of the weights
– Greater variety of exercises
– Widely available (can be home based)
– Closer to real-life situations; strength transfers to daily activities
free weights Disadvantages
– Not as safe
– Requires spotters
– Requires more skill
– Can cause blisters and calluses
Volume of Resistance Exercise (reps and sets)
o Each muscle group should be trained for 2-4 sets with a rest interval of 2-3 mins between sets.
o These sets may involve the same exercise or different exercises to train the same muscle group (could improve adherence)
o Compound exercises could improve adherence by saving time
o The number of sets/muscle group depends on: daily schedule, time demands, motivation etc
o To improve muscular strength, mass, and power
– 8-12 reps
– 60-80% 1-RM
– 2-4 sets per muscle group
– Fatigued not failure
o To improve muscular endurance
– 15-20 reps
– 1-2 sets per muscle group, shorter rest
– <50% 1-RM
