What Is Fitness and Exercise? Health Benefits, How to Get Started, and How to Get Better

Being fit is an important factor of living a healthy life. Having a high level of overall fitness is linked with a lower risk of chronic disease, as well as a better ability to manage health issues that do come up. Better fitness also promotes more functionality and mobility throughout one’s lifespan.

And in the short-term, being active can help your day-to-day functioning in ways that reach beyond the physical, including better mood, sharper focus, and better sleep.

Simply put: Our bodies are meant to move, and they tend to function better when we’re more fit. Here, learn about the many ways to be fit, the benefits of doing so, ways to get started, and more.

What It Means to Be Fit

It’s important to know that there are many different ways to be fit (think of a ballet dancer versus a bodybuilder or a sprinter versus a gymnast). Fitness does not have a singular “look.” In fact, appearance can’t necessarily tell you about someone’s habits, whether they’re actually physically active, or even whether they’re fit at all.

• Cardiorespiratory Fitness Your VO2 max is one measure of this component of your fitness. It’s your body’s ability to take and use oxygen, which feeds all of your tissues, rendering it integral to your health and quality of life, says Abbie Smith-Ryan, PhD, professor and director of the Applied Physiology Laboratory at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
• Musculoskeletal Fitness This includes muscle strength, endurance, and power.
• Flexibility This is the range of motion of your joints.
• Balance This is your ability to stay steady on your feet to avoid falls.
• Speed This is how quickly you can move.

In the real world, fitness translates to function, says Dr. Smith-Ryan. For example, can you carry your groceries or walk up the stairs without getting winded? Can you run around the backyard with your kids? Can you climb the stairs?

Exercise is distinct from fitness because exercise is what you do to improve your fitness.

Types of Fitness

Aerobic (Cardiovascular) Exercise

Aerobic exercise includes activities like brisk walking, running, cycling, swimming, aerobic fitness classes (like kickboxing), dancing, yard work, tennis, and jumping rope, per the Physical Activity Guidelines.

Strength Training

Strength training is an important way to improve mobility and overall functioning, particularly as you get older.

“As you age, you lose muscle mass, which can have a significant impact on the quality of life. Strength exercises build bones and muscle, and more muscle protects your body from falls and the fractures that can happen in older age,” says Robert Sallis, MD, a family medicine doctor at Kaiser Permanente in Fontana, California, and chair of the Exercise Is Medicine initiative with the American College of Sports Medicine.

Flexibility and Mobility

Flexibility refers to the ability of tendons, muscles, and ligaments to stretch, while mobility refers to the body’s ability to take a joint through its full range of motion.

Rest and Recovery

It’s crucial to incorporate rest and recovery into your routine to repair the natural damage that muscles endure during exercise. Exercise, by definition, puts stress on the muscles and the body. The repairing or healing of that stress is how you get stronger (and fitter). But you need to give the body adequate rest after a workout for that recovery process to happen.

Recovery days can include no physical activity at all or they may look like an active recovery day, which means doing low-intensity, low-impact forms of exercise, such as walking or gentle yoga. Dr. Sallis generally recommends doing some activity every day, such as a 10-minute walk outdoors.

For rest and recovery days, the idea isn’t that you’re immobile on your couch; it’s just that you’re not pushing yourself to a point where physical activity feels strenuous or challenging.

Health Benefits of Exercise

Strong physical fitness drastically reduces the risk of chronic diseases that develop over time, such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and even cancer. “The one thing that will help prevent almost any type of disease is fitness,” says Grayson Wickham, DPT, CSCS, founder of Movement Vault, a mobility and movement company in New York City.

Here’s a breakdown of the health benefits of having strong physical fitness.

Exercise Boosts Your Mood

Exercise Is Good for Sleep

It’s worth noting, however, that high-intensity exercise done too close to bedtime (within about an hour or two) can make it more difficult for some people to sleep and should be done earlier in the day.

Exercise Promotes Long-Term Health

Exercise has been shown to improve brain and bone health, preserve muscle mass (which protects against frailty), boost your sex life, improve gastrointestinal function, and reduce the risk of many diseases, including cancer and stroke.

Fitness Helps You Manage Chronic Disease

If you have a chronic disease and you’re looking to stay active or get more active, a walking routine is generally a safe place to start. “The vast majority of people do not need clearance from their doctor to start walking, unless your physician has told you specifically that they don’t want you exercising,” says Sallis.

But if you get excessively short of breath, experience chest pain, or have any other concerning symptoms, call your doctor.

How Much Exercise Do You Need?

Curious about how much exercise you actually need? Per the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, clocking either 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity (such as brisk walking) or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic activity (such as jogging or running) per week is the lowest amount of exercise that promotes a significant health boost. Doing a combination of moderate and vigorous activity is also okay, as long as you spread it out over at least two days during the week. And doing any amount of activity promotes better health.

There is currently no recommendation for flexibility or mobility work, according to the HHS. But older adults in particular should incorporate balance training into their weekly physical activity.

Doing more physical activity has been linked to even greater health benefits, particularly up to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week (after which the incremental benefits start to flatten out).

And know that these baseline fitness recommendations, while they are enough to promote good long-term health, may not be sufficient to meet certain health or fitness goals. (For example, you will need to exercise for a significantly longer amount of time each week if you want to train for a marathon.)

Also know that extreme amounts of exercise may put increased stress on the body and can actually lead to some negative health effects.

What to Eat Before, During, and After Exercise

Fueling your body with an adequate amount of nutrient-rich food before, during, and after your workout also plays an important role in effective exercise.

Before Your Workout If you’re exercising shortly after you wake up in the morning, listen to your body’s hunger cues, says Jackie Dikos, RDN, a sports dietitian in Westfield, Indiana, and author of Finish Line Fueling. If you ate a heavier or later dinner the night before, you may not need anything. If you have an intense workout ahead of you and are hungry, you may need a small snack.

Eating easy-to-digest carbohydrates, such as a banana or some cereal just prior to a workout, or a combination of carbs and protein (e.g., toast with nut butter) 30 minutes beforehand will fuel you up for the work ahead. If you recently ate a meal, you may be able to skip the snack entirely.

After Your Workout A low- to moderate-intensity workout, such as a 45-minute brisk walk, doesn’t require immediate refueling (particularly if your next meal is not far away), Dikos says. But if you’ve just done a high-intensity workout, or if you know you’re doing another workout later that day or a tough workout the next day, your body will need fuel. Dikos recommends eating half a gram of carbs per pound of body weight, plus 10 to 20 grams of protein.

Tips for Getting Started and Staying Motivated to Exercise

It can be tough to get into and stick with an exercise routine. Here are some tips:

• Break It Up The current Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans specify that all activity counts toward those weekly targets (as long as the intensity is high enough). You can take a five-minute walk up the block, climb the stairs in your home a few times, or stand up from your desk and do a set of squats. “More recent data shows that there are health benefits to accumulating activity. Those short ‘exercise snacks’ add up,” says Sallis.

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• Increase Slowly Jumping into a busy and intense exercise routine can set you up for mental and physical burnout — and it puts you at risk of injury, too. Sallis recommends beginning where you are comfortable (in terms of distance if you are walking or jogging, or in terms of weights if you are strength training) and slowly increasing the duration and intensity over a period of weeks or months. Getting on an exercise program (look at apps or small group training) or finding a personal trainer can help with this progression.
• Do “Non”-Exercise Exercise Do you count playing with your kids in the backyard, cleaning the house, doing yard work, dancing in your kitchen, and taking the dog out as exercise? You should, because they can all count toward your movement quota, says Sallis. Look at those everyday activities as opportunities to help you get fit and keep moving.
• Schedule It Exercise is as important as any other activity. And while small bouts are good, you’ll also probably get to a point where you want to work out for longer durations. And that’s where looking at your schedule, finding a time that works during your day, and adding it to your calendar (as a “nonnegotiable” meeting) will help, says Smith-Ryan.
• Consider HIIT High-intensity interval training (HIIT) can be great for beginners, including those who are sedentary or are overweight or have obesity. “In our lab, we have almost 100 percent compliance with interval training. HIIT is really easy to buy into and stick with,” Smith-Ryan says. HIIT calls for a shorter duration of exercise than traditional workouts (with the same benefits), resulting in a smaller time commitment and fewer injuries overall, she explains. (Plus, it can be done without equipment, in your home.) Even though it is “high-intensity,” you’ll move at a pace that’s appropriate for your fitness level, and you’ll only do short bouts of the more strenuous types of movement at a time. Recruiting a personal trainer to help you structure a HIIT workout can be a great help.
• Phone a Friend Working out with a friend can stoke your motivation and improve your exercise experience, according to research.

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What You Should Know About Home Gym Equipment

Exercising at home means you get to skip the commute to the gym, and you won’t have to wait for someone else to finish up on the machine you want to use. You get to work out whenever it fits into your schedule.

One positive outcome of the pandemic is that there are now so many more online resources for exercise programs, says Smith-Ryan. Many of those programs require no equipment at all and can be easily done with a small amount of floor space.

If you are just starting out, she says that simple body-weight exercises (squats, lunges, pushups) can help build muscle during resistance training. Consider investing in a yoga or exercise mat, so that you can easily do floor exercises. After that, consider collecting resistance bands or a set of dumbbells to up the intensity of strength training.

What you choose will depend on your preferences, budget, and the space available in your home. For instance, a set of resistance bands is cheap and can be stored easily. But know that you can get in a good sweat session without a lot of equipment and without having to spend a lot of money.

The Takeaway

• Just because you exercise at the gym doesn’t automatically mean you are fit. Being fit also reflects your ability to perform everyday tasks, such as climbing stairs, running around the backyard with your kids, or lifting grocery bags.
• Being fit and staying active can help lower your risk of chronic diseases and help you better manage health issues. Staying active can also improve your mood, focus, and sleep.
• Fitness looks different for everyone, and it's important to find the exercise and activity routine that works best for you, whether it's strength training, a home workout, taking a walk, or otherwise.