What Kind of Fit Are You?

Two students start running across the gym. One is faster. Easy conclusion: one is fitter.

Then somebody throws them a ball.

The faster runner fumbles it. The other catches it, changes direction, slips around a defender and makes the pass. Five minutes later, the fast runner is still happily moving while the other is bent over with hands on knees, reconsidering several recent life choices.

So which one is fitter?

Your body has different physical abilities

Your body has different physical abilities, and you almost certainly have a strange assortment of them. You might be quick but tire easily. Strong but not particularly flexible. You may have great endurance but possess the reaction time of someone who only became aware of the flying object shortly after it arrived.

This becomes obvious whenever people try different activities. The person who destroys everyone in a sprint may discover that skating has somehow replaced their legs with two confused pieces of lumber. Someone who looks completely ordinary casually walking into the gym can suddenly pick up a badminton racquet and begin returning shots that everyone else had already mentally classified as impossible.

Fitness has different parts

Some parts of fitness are especially connected with your body's ability to do physical work.

Then there are abilities that affect how you move.

You already have your own combination

Think about physical things that come surprisingly easily to you. Maybe you can hike for ages, sprint quickly, catch almost anything thrown near you, learn dance movements quickly, lift heavy things, balance well, skate, swim, climb or react quickly in a game.

Perhaps your greatest demonstration of acceleration occurs when someone announces that the bus is about to leave. It still tells you something about what your body can do.

Now reverse the question.

What is harder?

Maybe your lungs begin filing complaints fairly early during a long run. Perhaps upper-body strength is not currently one of your headline attractions. You might be able to run for an hour but throw a ball toward one person and have it arrive somewhere near an entirely different postal code. Or maybe touching your toes has always seemed less like a fitness assessment and more like an unreasonable demand from people who clearly have different hamstrings.

Your interests matter too

And this is where your interests become important. If you love cycling but hate running, you do not need to become a runner before you are allowed to improve your cardiorespiratory endurance.

If competitive sports make you miserable but you enjoy hiking, climbing, dancing, swimming or working out with a friend, that tells you something useful too.

Sometimes the activity isn't even the main attraction. You went walking because your friend was going. You rode somewhere because you wanted to get somewhere. You spent an hour skating because other people were there and somehow your heart, muscles and lungs got dragged into the arrangement without being consulted.

Repeated movement gives your body a reason to adapt

Repeated movement is what gives your body the opportunity to adapt. Challenge muscles and they can become stronger or better able to keep working. Regularly challenge your heart, lungs and circulation and your cardiorespiratory fitness can improve.

Practise movements and your nervous system becomes better at coordinating them, which is one reason something that once required the concentration of a bomb-disposal technician can eventually feel almost automatic.

Those adaptations matter beyond getting better at a sport. Physical activity and fitness are connected with stronger muscles and bones, cardiovascular and metabolic health, brain function, sleep and mental well-being.

Becoming better at something can also change something less measurable: how capable you feel.

Ask a better fitness question

So perhaps the most useful fitness question isn't:

For one person, the answer might be enough endurance to hike with friends without secretly hoping everyone will stop to admire a rock.

Someone else might want more strength, quicker reactions, better coordination or enough flexibility to make a particular activity easier.

Another person may simply want to discover one physical activity that doesn't make checking their phone every eleven seconds seem like an emergency.

Now the pieces fit together

Now strengths, interests, challenges and goals are no longer four things somebody put on a worksheet.

They fit together.

There is no single correct way to be fit

You don't need to be good at every kind of fitness. Almost nobody is.

The useful skill is becoming good at reading your own strengths, interests and challenges, then deciding what you would actually like to improve.

And fortunately, nobody is handing out report cards for touching your toes.