Personal Training study...The bare bones!

As part of this blog, I am going to detail the various topics that are necessary to understand in order to become qualified as a Personal Trainer.

It starts with the components of fitness, that is, what makes up total fitness?  The answer is that to truly "fit" you must have the following:
Social fitness - building friendships and getting on with people, 
Mental fitness - thinking positively about oneself and those around you. i.e. not spending too much time in your "dark place!"
Medical fitness - being free of medical illness, an apple a day and all that!
Nutritional fitness - eating a healthy and nutritionally balanced diet i.e. cut down on the pizza and eat some greens, and apples...
Spiritual fitness - having a belief system that guides morals and values i.e. religion, spirituality, or whatever floats your boat.
Emotional fitness - looking after ourselves and how we feel, respecting ourselves and others,
and of course, Physical fitness - the ability to cope with physical demands i.e. lifting heavy stuff!

Obviously we are interested mainly in the last of these, but in order to be truly fit, we must look after all the other aspects. So eat up your greens, go see your doctor, make a friend, be happy, pray, have some "me" time and lift some heavy stuff and you should be ok!

Moving on then, we have some definitions:
Muscular strength - the ability of a muscle or group of muscles to exert maximum force in one contraction.
Muscular endurance - the ability of a muscle or group of muscles to contract continuously other time without fatigue.
Cardio fitness - also referred to as fitness, it is the ability of the heart and lungs to transport and utilise oxygen in the production of energy.
Flexibility - the ability to take joints and muscles through their full range of movement, and
Motor skills - this is a general term which includes co-ordination, reaction time, agility, balance and speed.

From here we move on to Anatomy. The base of your body is of course the skeleton. 

 

 The skeleton is made up of 2 components:
1. The Axial skeleton - made up of the skull and mandible (jaw), the spinal column, (cervical, thoracic and lumbar vertibrae), the sacrum, coccyx, the sternum and ribs.
And,
 2. The Appendicular skeleton - The shoulder girdle (scapula and clavicle), the humerus(upper arm), ulna and radius (forearm), the carpals (wrist), the metacarpals (hand) and the phlanges (fingers). The pelvic girdle (iliom, ischium and pubis), the femur (upper leg), the tibia and fibula (lower leg), tarsals (ankle), metatarsals (foot) and phlanges (toes).

The girdles are what attaches the upper and lower extremites to the the axial skeleton.  This system of bones meets at joints, the location and type of connection varies, and the muscular system attaches to the skeleton to provide movement. Joint types and the types of movement possible at these joints is going to be the focus of the next thrilling Personal Training installment of this here blog (though not necessarily the next post!)

As always, I would welcome any comments, or if anyone has any good resources to recommend on the topic of anatomy, physiology or kinematics, I would be greatly appreciative. I want to ensure that I can develop an excellent base of knowledge and this is quite simply where it all begins.

If you want to, you can follow me on Twitter, @B_FAST, or add me on Facebook, dave ballantine.