The relationship between fitness and exercise

Fitness is a subset of exercise. It is an actively planned exercise with clear health, shape or performance improvement goals. The two are neither equal nor antagonistic, and the boundaries will flow at any time as individual needs change.

When I was changing clothes in the gym last week, I heard an older brother next to me who had just finished a half-marathon complaining to the coach: "I have been running for three years. My friend said before that this is not fitness and I have to do it by weight, but I don't accept it." In fact, when I say this, it means that many people have a vague perception of the boundary between the two, but they can't explain it clearly.

If you often go to the gym, you must have heard a similar saying: "Walking the dog is called exercise, not fitness." Most of those who hold this view are fitness enthusiasts who have clear training goals, such as those who want to gain muscle, prepare for competitions, or burn body fat. In their context, fitness must meet the requirements of "having clear goals, having a quantifiable training plan, and being able to correspondingly improve one or more physical fitness indicators." This definition is actually in line with the standards of authoritative sports medicine organizations. The definition of "fitness-related physical activities" in the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) does clearly require "planning, goal-oriented, and positive gains in physical fitness." I also believed this in the first two years of my fitness training. At that time, if I didn’t stay in the gym for 1.5 hours or complete my training capacity that day, I would be too embarrassed to post it on my friends circle. Walking 40 minutes home from get off work would be considered an “invalid activity” and a pure waste of time.

It wasn't until I injured my waist with deadlifts and the doctor ordered me not to bear weights for three months and could only do low-intensity activities that I slowly changed my mind. During that time, I walked around the neighborhood for 40 minutes after dinner every day, and went to the swimming pool to swim breaststroke for an hour on weekends. I didn’t record my heart rate and didn’t count my energy consumption. I even wore sportswear casually. After three months of reexamination, I found that my body fat rate had only increased by 0.2%. My cardiopulmonary function was better than before when I was lifting weights every day, and most of the discomfort in my waist was gone. Do you think what I did during that time was considered fitness?

Nowadays, the kinesiology community is actually more inclined to the concept of "big fitness". As long as it is an exercise that you actively do to improve your physical condition, whether it is weightlifting, horse racing, square dancing, playing badminton with children for half an hour, or even deliberately climbing three floors a day, it is considered fitness. My mother dances square dance for 40 minutes every morning with the aunties in the community. She wears kneepads specially, and stretches for 5 minutes after dancing. She always says to everyone that she "went to the gym." You can't deny her needs just because she doesn't go to the gym or buy private lessons, right? I've seen people arguing for more than 300 floors in the comment area of ​​fitness bloggers over "whether square dancing counts as fitness." In fact, it doesn't need to be. It depends on your purpose of doing it: if you just join in the fun and dance for 10 minutes and then go to chat, that's leisure and entertainment. ； If you focus on the standard of movements every day and strengthen yourself, that is real fitness.

Many people like to say, "I don't like fitness, I just like playing ball/cycling/climbing." In fact, there is no conflict in this. I have a friend who plays amateur basketball. He used to despise going to the gym because he thought it was all "dead muscles." Until he sprained his knee during a game last year, he practiced functional training with a rehabilitation therapist for three months during his recovery. Now he does 20 minutes of activation before each game. He also goes to the gym one day a week to practice core and lower limb strength. Now he laughs to himself: "It turns out that what I used to do was called building my body in vain, but the fitness content I practice now has actually allowed me to play basketball for ten more years." You see, at this time fitness becomes a tool to support your enjoyment of other sports. The two are not an either-or relationship at all.

ACSM's 2023 global fitness trend report also mentioned that among the people around the world who insist on regular fitness, 62% of people choose "non-gym daily exercise" as a fitness method. Cycling, hiking, home exercises, and even gardening are all listed, which shows that people no longer frame their fitness in front of the several square meters of mirrors in the gym.

Harmful, in fact, there is no need to draw the boundary between the two so tightly. The essence of exercise is to make you move as long as you feel comfortable. Fitness is nothing more than the extra effort and effort you put in to make yourself in better physical condition. If you love walking after meals and deliberately walk an extra 20 minutes every day, that is your own customized fitness plan, and the effect may not be worse than others spending tens of thousands on personal training classes - after all, whether it is exercise or fitness, the ultimate beneficiary is you.