FITT Principle

It is commonly agreed students need to be empowered to construct and tailor workouts to meet their individual health-related fitness needs. Each component of health-related fitness is important to teach even very young students. This approach will help combat today’s media, which emphasizes the need for outward appearance over health and wellness.

 

Overload and progression are two basic training principles: 

 

Overload refers to the amount of load or resistance, providing a greater stress, or load, on the body than it is normally accustomed to in order to increase fitness.

 

Progression is the way in which an individual should increase the load. It is a gradual increase either in frequency, intensity, or time or a combination of all three components.

 

The FITT Principle describes how to safely apply the principles of overload and progression:

 

• Frequency

• Intensity

• Time

• Type (specificity)

 

Frequency is how often a person performs the targeted health-related physical activity. For each component of health-related fitness, a safe frequency is three to five times a week. Intensity Intensity is how hard a person exercises during a physical activity period.

 

Intensity can be measured in different ways, depending on the related health-related component. For example, monitoring heart rate is one way to gauge intensity during aerobic endurance activities, but gives no indication of intensity during flexibility activities

 

Time is the length of the physical activity. As with the other aspects of the FITT principle, time varies depending on the health-related fitness component targeted. For example, flexibility or stretching may take 10-30 seconds for each stretch, while the minimum time for performing aerobic activity is 20 minutes of continuous activity.

 

Type or specificity, refers to the specific physical activity chosen to improve a component of health-related fitness. For example, an individual wishing to increase arm strength must exercise the triceps and biceps, while an individual wishing to increase aerobic endurance needs to jog, run, swim or perform some other aerobically challenging activity.

 

Reference: AAHPERD, (1999). Physical Education for Lifelong Fitness: The Physical Best Teacher’s Guide, Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics; pgs. 78-79