Physical Fitness and Wellness
This unit asks you to classify fitness components, separate fitness from wellness, apply simple fitness tests, and connect inactivity with hypokinetic disease.
Health-related components
Cardiorespiratory (aerobic) endurance; muscular strength; muscular endurance; flexibility; body composition.
Skill-related components
Speed; agility; balance; coordination; power; reaction time.
Fitness versus wellness
Wellness is wider than fitness: a deliberate, lifelong choice of healthy habits producing physical, mental, emotional, social, intellectual, occupational and environmental well-being. Fitness is a means; wellness is the overall condition.
Testing
- Harvard Step Test - cardiorespiratory endurance. Bench 20 inches (men) / 16 inches (women), 30 steps per minute for up to 5 minutes; count pulse between 1–1.5, 2–2.5 and 3–3.5 minutes of recovery. Fitness Index = (duration of exercise in seconds × 100) ÷ (2 × sum of the three pulse counts).
- BMI = weight (kg) ÷ height (m)². Below 18.5 underweight; 18.5–24.9 normal; 25–29.9 overweight; 30 and above obese.
- Sit-and-reach for flexibility; 1-minute sit-ups for muscular endurance; 50 m sprint for speed; 4×10 m shuttle run for agility.
Worked example
Athlete: 70 kg, 1.75 m. BMI = 70 ÷ (1.75 × 1.75) = 70 ÷ 3.0625 = 22.9, i.e. normal. Add the examiner’s extra point: BMI does not separate muscle from fat, so a heavily muscled athlete can read “overweight”. Showing that limitation converts a 2-mark calculation into a 3-mark answer.
Traps
- Mixing categories - power, agility and reaction time are skill-related, not health-related.
- Using height in centimetres in the BMI formula.
- Writing “wellness = fitness” or listing only physical wellness.