Chapter 8: Muscular Fitness

By: Monique Howard&

Corey Brown

Muscular Strength & Endurance

Muscular fitness includes two health related components of physical fitness: Muscular Strength and Endurance.

Muscular Strength is the ability of a muscle group to apply a maximal force against a resistance one time.

Muscular Endurance is the ability to repeat muscle movement over a period of time.

Myths about Weight Training

• Muscle bond physique equals flexibility.

• Weight training is not good for females.

• Muscle can turn into fat.

• FALSE!!!! Makes Body stiff!

• FALSE!!!! Good muscular fitness is just as important for women as it is for men.

• FALSE!!!! Muscle is muscle and fat is fat. Muscle atrophy can occur and muscle can become smaller!

Muscle Fiber Composition • Slow-twitch or red fibers provide the body with

the ability to do muscular endurance or aerobic activities.

• Intermediate twitch factors have characteristics of both slow twitch and fast twitch.

• Fast twitch or white fibers enable the body to do muscular strength or anaerobic activities.

Methods of Developing Muscular Fitness

• 3 types of exercises provide resistance to make the muscle work harder for the purpose of developing muscular fitness: isometric, isotonic, and isokenetic.

Isometric Exercise

• You contract, or tighten, your muscles but do not change their length.

• During isometric contractions, strength is developed only at one fixed position within a muscle full range of movement

Isotonic Exercise

• Are those in which you lengthen and shorten the muscle through a full range of movement while lowering and raising resistance

Isokenetic Exercise• With the use of specially designed

machines, overcome the disadvantages of isometric and the isotonic exercise

• Advantages: maximum resistance is provided at the stronger angles, while less resistance is provided at the weaker angles.

Words You Should Know• Atrophy- the wasting away or decrease is size of a body

part particularly muscle.• Slow twitch fibers- red muscle fibers that are slow to

contract but have the ability to continue contracting for long periods of time.

• Intermediate twitch fibers- muscle fibers that posses a combination of the fact and slow twitch fiber characteristics.

• Fast twitch fibers- white muscle fibers that contract quickly, allowing explosive muscular contractions.

Words you should know contd.

• Isometric exercises- exercises in which one contracts muscles but does not move body parts.

• Isotonic exercises- exercises in which a muscle lengthens and shortens through its full range of movement while lowering and raising a resistance.

• Isokinetic exercises- exercises done with special machines that allow for maximum resistance over the complete range of motion.

• Repetition- the completion of a single, full-range movement of the body part being exercised.

• Set- a group of repetitions performed one after the other.

Weight Training Precautions

• Warm up properly before you begin any physical conditioning programs.

• Check barbell plate before you lift to make sure they are properly secured and will not slip off.

• Keep hands dry for good grip.

• Hold the bar or machine hand-grips.

• Keep the weight close to the body when lifting it from the floor to your chest.

• Go through the complete range of motion to increase flexibility.