Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger – body conditioning the right way
2 min
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Conditioning is more than just working on your stamina. Let’s talk about what body conditioning really means and how you can make your training more effective.
What exactly is body condition?
First things first: Strengthening your conditioning isn’t just about working on your endurance. Condition is not the same as endurance, although endurance is a key factor.
Your condition is your physical performance. You could also think of it as your general resilience. It’s the combination of strength, endurance, speed, mobility, and coordination. And that’s exactly why you have to do much more than jogging or cycling in order to keep it at its peak.
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Which sports and exercises help build your conditioning?
A balanced combination of strength, endurance, speed, flexibility, and coordination is vital in most sports. Training all five at the same time, however, can only be accomplished with a good workout plan. Let’s learn a bit more about each of the components needed to improve your conditioning.
Strength
Weight training and fitness training are ideal for improving your strength. More powerful muscles mean that your body will find it easier to perform everyday movements and activities.
In addition, your muscles also protect and support your joints and, when properly developed, also ensure better posture. Even runners benefit from regular strength training and can improve their endurance and speed.
Endurance
Endurance is a very important part of fitness. The best way to train it is with classic aerobic activities like running, swimming and cycling. But inline skating, rowing, and cross-training are all ideal ways to improve your endurance.
With good basic endurance, your body will be able to perform better, longer. You’ll be able to achieve better performance in almost every kind of sport, and it will also make your everyday life feel a lot better.
Speed
You can train speed in many different ways, including through endurance training. You can also train your reaction speed and power.
Ball and team sports such as football, basketball, or handball are particularly suitable for this. All three sports require you to react very quickly, and simultaneously need well-trained, high-speed strength for accurate shots and throws.
Flexibility
Flexibility is often neglected as a critical part of your fitness. Many sports do not place much emphasis on flexibility, but good physical mobility helps you to improve your body awareness and to move more efficiently overall.
Gymnasts, dancers, yogis and martial artists know exactly how important healthy mobility is. But you also need to strengthen your muscles as well, because excessive flexibility with weak muscles can also lead to injuries.
Coordination
Coordination is a skill that should always be trained to suit your sport. A martial artist moves completely differently than a runner. Even though running may look easy at first glance, there are many coordination exercises to improve your running style and become faster and tougher.
Better body conditioning exercises
A good fitness training plan, tailored to your sport of choice, should be comprehensive and prepared by a trained athletic coach. If you want to improve your general condition, training methods such as HIIT, Tabata and Circuit Training are especially helpful, because they require and improve all five components: strength, endurance, speed, flexibility, and coordination. Download our free training plans here.
Download our free circuit training guide
Summary
- Building stamina is more than just improving your endurance.
- Conditioning is made up of strength, endurance, speed, flexibility, and coordination.
- Training any one of these 5 skills also impacts the others.
- The easiest way to build up your general condition is with HIIT and circuit training.
Sources for this article
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