Physical Fitness, Wellness and Lifestyle
This domain tests whether you can sort the components of fitness into the right category, explain wellness as a multi-dimensional state, and connect everyday lifestyle choices to hypokinetic disease. Board questions here are usually short-answer: name it, classify it, or justify it.
Health-related versus skill-related fitness
- Health-related (5): cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, body composition.
- Skill-related (6): speed, agility, balance, coordination, power, reaction time.
- Power is strength applied quickly, so it sits with the skill-related group even though it depends on strength.
Wellness and lifestyle
Wellness has physical, emotional, intellectual, social, spiritual and occupational or environmental dimensions; a person can be free of disease and still score low on wellness. Lifestyle determinants include diet quality, daily activity, sleep duration, stress load and substance use.
Hypokinetic disease
Obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease, osteoporosis and chronic low back pain all rise with inactivity. Regular moderate activity improves insulin sensitivity, raises HDL cholesterol and lowers resting heart rate.
Worked example
A student is 1.70 m tall and weighs 72 kg. BMI = 72 ÷ (1.70 × 1.70) = 72 ÷ 2.89 = 24.9 kg/m². Standard cut-offs are underweight below 18.5, normal 18.5–24.9, overweight 25.0–29.9 and obese 30 and above, so he sits at the very top of the normal band. The reasoning matters as much as the number: BMI is only a mass-to-height screening ratio and cannot tell fat from muscle, so a heavily muscled athlete can be wrongly flagged.
Traps that cost marks
- Calling power a health-related component.
- Confusing muscular strength (one maximal effort) with muscular endurance (repeated submaximal efforts).
- Treating fitness and wellness as synonyms, or claiming BMI diagnoses obesity.