Why didn’t you say you were talking about evolution? This has suddenly become an interesting thread!
Fitness has a heavy social interaction. Society has some basic standards about what a fit person ought to look like and ought to be able to do, and if you don’t fit those standards, you may not be “fit” to the general public. Unfotunately, I think most of these societal standards are based almost entirely on appearance rather than ability. However, you take that same individual and put them in another situation, like power lifting or running a marathon, and he may be horribly unfit. Similarly, you take a champion power lifter or a marathon runner and put them up against normal standards and they’d probably fall short too.
The unfortunate thing is that many people don’t really need any amount of physical strength, endurance, flexibility, or balance to perform their jobs or live their lives, at least not the way we did in generations past where we could easily judge fitness as someone who is successfully able to perform whatever tasks they need to do.
But if we’re aiming for a general definition, I’d just say someone that is able to perform at some percentile in multiple categories, and that the most fit people perform overall the best in the most categories. To this point, oddly enough, I think this is where a competition like World’s Strongest Man is somewhat successful because it doesn’t just test raw strength, but also muscular and cardiovascular endurance, balance, quickness, etc. Of course, it’s skewed with a certain perspective, but if you could take those sorts of events, turned down a few notches, and also include some serious endurance type tests, you’ll probably find the fittest people doing that.
Because that is only one possible take on the question. I am attracted to it as a definition and as a result of consideration during this discussion to the confluence of physical and evolutionary fitness that it represents - but it obviously is not the only take possible.
ultafilter - I would say that I am asking about “general fitness”: absent a particular goal - such as running a marathon, or completing a half ironman, or hitting a personal best time in some distance of cycling or running, or putting on X amount of muscle mass, or losing Y amount of fat - what would you think should be default “general” physical fitness targets?
Is fitness just a social construction, as Blaster Master appears to initially propose?
Acid Lamp yes, some are not built to be as fit in some dimensions than others. I too have short legs … I’ll never be the elite swimmer, and while I have trained up to the level of running a marathon, no amount of training will get me fast at it (my motto was “Slow … but stubborn.”) I do not have the genetic stuff to be an elite fit. I can merely satisfy myself by being more fit than I have been in the past (which is hard to judge without a workable definition of fitness). In your proposed categories, what is the “raw endurance” as opposed to “strength” and “cardio” endurance?
Raw endurance would be the ability to sustain a moderate level of varying physical activities for a substantial length of time. For example a test might include a survival scenario. Say walking a few miles, then digging/ clearing a shelter area, cutting/ gathering wood to build a fire. All continuous and broken up frequently but without breaks. A long obstacle course with multiple challenges is another sort. This is different to the other types of endurance as it is a lesser, but combined effort that must be exerted for a much greater length of time. It may seem redundant, but I know a lot of people who can go all day working, but fail horribly at exercise type tests. This is a different sort of non specialized physical activity that certainly should count when discussing fitness.
I’m not at all certain that this is a coherent concept.
Actually it does not seem at all redundant and seems to me that the ability to perform well in that sort of test is closer to what I am thinking of as fitness. Anything more than a very minimal level of fitness may be minimally functional for most of our current activities of daily living, but it seems to me that the more fit individual is someone who could be placed into any of a wide variety of hard manual labor environments, both current and historic back to Paleolithic times, and outwork others.
ultrafilter what part seems less than coherent to you? I am not asking about fitness for a specific goal but rather asking how we should, or even if we can, define general fitness. I am conceding that fitness is sometimes goal specific, as you put it “for a particular use”, but what about those of us who have no “particular use” in mind other than the vague notion of “being fit” - how should we define our target more precisely? And why?
I mostly discount our current society entirely, mainly because it represents less than 1% of the human historical experience and also because in the present context physical fitness has no meaning at all. While the military hasn’t actually allowed it yet, technically a 350 lbs gamer who gets winded walking up a flight of stairs can fly a drone and kill hundreds of people with the click of a button, a far more deadly soldier than the toughest and best trained knight or samurai could ever dream of being.
Our society doesn’t require you to participate in sports, and even most manual labor jobs don’t seem to require physical fitness. I have an extended family with a decent bit of people in it who work tough, manual labor jobs (construction, coal mining etc) and well, most of those guys are a bit fat and probably wouldn’t do too well in any sort of endurance contest. They aren’t weight lifters either, so while they have some “strength” they certainly can’t perform well by any sort of lifting metrics.
Someone can be quite “strong” in the normal sense but when it comes to weight lifting if you haven’t done the specific lifts over and over again to build up your ability at them, you’d be shocked at how little weight even a big, strong guy can lift. For example a good number of big, strong guys who never work out probably can’t bench over 150 lbs.
So since there is no present-day utilitarian argument for fitness we can either just say “it’s all your opinion” and the thread is pointless, or we can point back to what meant “fitness” for 99.9% of human existence.
Ever tried it? All this “distribution of body types” stuff is absolutely bullshit. I can guarantee you unless you are physically disabled or in some way have a medical condition, you can be short and broad or tall and lean and you can easily work up to running 15 miles at a time (I don’t mean sprinting so hard your heart rate is over 90%, I mean running.)
I’m not a runner at all in fact I can’t remember the last time I ran over a few miles in a stretch, I ran a marathon some twenty years ago just because it was one of those things I had always wanted to do to see if I could. I wasn’t much of a runner before building up to the marathon and I wasn’t much of a runner after, and it didn’t take me years of work to get to the point of running one.
At the time I ran it I weighed 215 lbs (on a 6’5" frame.) That’s technically overweight if you go by BMI, but I didn’t feel overweight or have “visible” fatness, I was at a point in my life where I was lifting weights a few times a week and I was not what anyone would think of when they think of a stereotypical distance runner.
When you get into running for a bit, you invariably meet a lot of people. This was 20 years ago before running became as popular as it is now, but I met short, heavyset men who were able to run a marathon and really tall, lanky women, and everything in between.
And yet it’s in “current society” that we are being asked to find a definition of fitness, and it’s “current society” where our level of fitness actually matters. The very term itself requires context, and what better context that the time and place that is of most relevance to those of us actually discussing the question.
So what. The question was not “How do you define ‘lethal’?” Ir was “How do you define fitness.”
With all due respect, those guys probably would do poorly at a traditional “cardio” type test. What they are superiour at is doing moderate activity for a long period of time. You are making the mistake of judging general fitness against specialized athletes. Only marathon runners have the cardio endurance of our paelolithic ancestors; only the cream of weightlifters could compete with a Neandertal. A bench press test is only one measure of raw power. What about squats, or mil presses? What about deadlifts or curls? I know a few mechanics who would struggle bench 150, but can curl 60 to 80 lbs because they do it all day.
Our modern era may be soft, but insisting that only the most elite are “fit” is just silly. We have loads of measures and benchmarks for human physical performance. We should be able to come up with a reasonable definition of “General Fitness”.
snip.
I don’t doubt that anyone can train up to running long distances, I merely pointed out that not everyone will have equal aptitude for it. You mention that you are 6’5. You probably have legs that are 6-10 inches longer than mine. That’s like me having another whole shin. It’s easily an extra foot per running stride if not more. These things make a difference. My point overall is that there are a lot of different types of athletic specialization, cardio being only one of many. Yes, I’ve tried long distance running before. I’m absolute shite at it. I can only sustain a jog for about 3/4 of a mile at a time. I can walk all day though without tiring. I can do other types of cardio reasonably well like biking, jumping jacks, and sprints. I’m not overweight at all, I’m just at the crap end of the curve in that area. On the other hand, I can do more pull ups, situps, and pushups then nearly all men my age except professional athletes.
Huh? Who are you talking about? What are you talking about?
Are you saying theoretical fat guys piloting remote drones would fail a cardio test? I wouldn’t contest that.
Are you saying some guys I know that are manual laborers would fail a cardio test? I’m certain they would, they’re certainly in better shape than similarly aged individuals who have desk jobs and do no exercise, but they don’t exercise at all and probably get winded very easily (most of them smoke and all of them drink regularly, also.)
Huh? I’m not comparing general fitness to marathon running. If you read my earlier post I specifically said that marathon runners aren’t the ideal. Most people I knew from “that culture” ran 10 miles a day regularly, just to do it. Our paleolithic ancestors did not run without reason, in that time in human history you didn’t waste energy foolishly. They were able to run 15 miles at a time in persistence hunting when they needed to, it is highly unlikely they hunted every day. In fact they may have only hunted like 5-6 times a month.
What I’m getting at is there is obviously a level of fitness that would allow you to run 15 miles at a time “irregularly” meaning you’d have the endurance to do it when necessary but you weren’t doing it all the time just for the hell of it.
Talking about the different lifts is just an expansion of what I was talking about. Weight lifting (which I think I also mentioned) isn’t a super great way to measure fitness because it is a very specialized set of movements. Many of the lifts are designed to isolate muscles in ways that don’t happen “naturally.” How often do you need to do a bench press outside of the gym? How often do you need to do most of the lifts that isolate the chest muscle, the shoulders, the back muscles, or the triceps outside of a gym?
I agree a curl is probably something a heavy manual laborer would be good at because it isn’t totally dissimilar from lifting that a laborer might do regularly. A squat is also not a motion totally alien to what a warehouse worker or someone might do fairly regularly on their jobs.
But weight lifting isn’t a good measure of general fitness because it exists outside of the “real” world.
I’m not slamming weight lifting by the way, I’ve lifted my entire life (without ever considering myself a body builder or a power lifter, it’s something I enjoy but I don’t go crazy with it) and think it is great. But it has as much to do with the “real world” as jiujitsu or kendo. The real world of course is a world of desk jockeys and such, so physical fitness is entirely remove from it anyway. That is why I think the only objective measure for “fitness” for a specimen of homo sapien is how well they can do what this species has primarily evolved to do.
I never insisted that, and I think you’ve badly misread my earlier post.
Different body configurations obviously are hugely important at the super high level.
If you want to set the world record for some types of lifts, it helps to be tall. At the same time, it helps to be short (or at least to have short arms) if you want to set the world record at bench pressing. While controversial because of his use of one of those canvas lifting shirts, the guy I’ve seen bench 1000 lbs was short and squat and had short, thick arms.
Likewise if you want to be the world’s best jockey, better hope you’re tiny. If you want to be a center in the NBA you’d better be tall.
But we’re not talking the super extremes, I’m talking about the simple act of running for an hour or so at a time without falling over dead. Most humans can get to that point quite easily if they want. (I’m not lecturing by the way, I don’t do much cardio and most of my exercise is lifting these days.)
As far as I’m concerned that’s not an interesting topic. “Current society” fitness doesn’t matter, period. I guess on some abstract level you could argue out of shape guys are less likely to get laid and less likely to have kids. But, to be honest, I’ve not observed that to be the case. Most people my age (50+) that I personally know have been married and the majority have one or two kids floating around. The ones that don’t (like me) are mostly like that because of personality traits, not physical ones.
You’re looking for a fight that isn’t there on this. I’m not arguing that “ability to kill someone” is a good measure of fitness. I’m just highlighting that physical fitness is mostly irrelevant in modern society, and is becoming so even in the traditional areas that in the past you could always say “it matters” for. Fifty years ago no one would argue that if you’re in the military you needed to be in good shape, and while the military still has some physical fitness standards it is also grappling with the same overweight/obesity problem that the rest of society is grappling with. At the same time many military jobs (even ones involving combat) are at a point now where physical fitness does not matter.
In case you thought I was the poster upthread who was saying the only thing physical fitness matters in is mortal combat, that wasn’t what I was saying. I was just pointing out that even the one or two areas you still can imagine fitness being important, it is rapidly losing its importance. I do this because I wanted to emphasize there can be no “standard of fitness” in a society in which no one needs to be fit to perform their function.
If that’s where you’d like to stop the thread, fine by me. I took the viewpoint of looking at us as a species instead of the present-tense snap shot of us as a species living in a specific type of society that isn’t statistically a very large portion of our species history.
DSeid, I’ve given this considerable thought. There is only one reasonable measure of physical fitness. The amount of alcohol you can drink relative to body weight and time, and retain the ability to play mumbley peg without stabbing yourself. (‘considerable’ means hardly any, right?)
I would define physical fitness as a function of stamina. I would set the standard at a 6 minute mile.
Do you mean 1 mile, and 1 mile only, in 6 minutes. Or do you mean maintaining a constant 6-minute-mile pace for even longer.
Either way, i still see no point in such a preposterously narrow and specific measurement.
Physical fitness is being at the optimum state of health to ward off illness/death for as long as possible.
The yoga people sometimes mention ‘weightlessness’ as a goal of yoga practice. It is a subjective measure. Apparently a person could take their practice up to a certain level where they could perform a fairly acrobatic yoga routine without losing control of their breath, and without succumbing to the various panic, suffocation, or fatigue responses the practice seems pretty much designed to force you to confront. A person who is really fit in this way would transform their physicality into a sort of act of will and would therefore experience movement as ‘weightless’. Obviously there is a big mental component to this. With the breath control for example, a big part of it is simply recognizing that the out-of breath response is for some reason really ‘premature’- you have quite a lot of gas left between the onset of these feelings and actually passing out. Obviously getting more exercise increases one’s capacity, and increasing one’s capacity makes it seem like you’ve got more mental control over it, and it is hard to draw the line between where one starts and the other stops. Anyway I am not an expert on this and am probably too half-assed about yoga to take it that far, so take this with a grain of salt.
The subjective side seems to overlap with the physical side. Yoga practice seems to activate the endogenic opiod system- I could be wrong but the kind of calmness it induces seems chemically induced and not merely a side effect of the meditational aspect of the practice. Other activities like running or weightlifting seem to activate adrenal and epinephrine systems- they make a person feel invigorated and alert. ISTM a person has to be at a certain level of fitness to be able to trigger these systems vigorously. Once you’re there I think you’ll just know it. For me it seems that getting regular doses of these natural drugs is the cure for the kind of modern anxiety that I think people are trying to cure with cigarettes or fat/salt/sugar or booze and drugs or what have you (though I admit that the oil spill was driving me to drink like a hobo for awhile there, and where was my super yoga talent then, huh?) But in a nutshell a fit person can physically induce a sense of well-being.
I could try to translate this into paleolithic terms. You’d be in a position to hulk out on adrenaline such that you could twist the head of that panther around until the neck snaps, but then instead of beating your chest all day in animal fury until you burn out you’d be able to calm back down, let go of the stress and deal with your environment in a more nuanced way, and the quicker the better.
If it’s a question of physical fitness then there is a metric involved. The point of such a narrow and specific measurement is to gauge the fitness of someone. It can be to test someone’s heart rate in a doctor’s office or as a test of school children to ensure some degree of health.