Volunteer, Chinasa, held her personal CAD and the last of the cycle on ‘physical fitness’. Influenced by her passion for physical well-being and her studies on physiotherapy, Chinasa decided to put the volunteers through their paces early in the morning on Tuesday, 29th August.With the volunteers wiping the sleep from their eyes, Chinasa was ready to go and a warm up was done which left many disgruntled and wondering what had happened. During the warm up, Chinasa explained and demonstrated to the team the five components of physical fitness which are: muscular strength, muscular endurance, cardiovascular endurance, flexibility and body fat composition.
Chinasa described muscular strength as the power that helps one lift and carry heavy objects and that without muscular strength; the body would be weak and unable to keep up with other demands placed on it. Muscular endurance, on the other hand, is the ability of one’s body muscles to perform contractions for an extended period of time. The third component is the cardiovascular endurance which is the body’s ability to keep up with exercises like jogging, running, or anything that forces the system (including organs like lungs, heart, blood vessels) to function for an extended period of time. The heart and lungs fuel the muscles with the oxygen needed by the body for the work to be done.
Chinasa also talked about flexibility as the fourth component of physical fitness which is often easily overlooked by individuals. This prompted some hilarious flexibility tests that involved team members having to touch their toes and performing the ‘sit and reach’ test where team members sat on the floor and tried to reach for their toes. Many volunteers were stiff as a board and many muscles twitched. Her final subject was on body fat composition which she described as the amount of fat in the body. The facilitator encouraged adults 150 minutes of moderate cardiovascular activity plus two days of muscle -strengthening workout every week.
After Chinasa’s educative lesson, the team jogged around the neighbourhood which then ended as a race. Adam showed his speed and beat all the competition to reach the office in first place. Keeping fit is not an easy task as many people find engaging and sticking to a workout routine overwhelming, so for Chinasa’s CAD to give the volunteers a gentle reminder was excellent, especially due to the amount of puff-puff consumed in the past ten weeks. The CAD was informative and a fantastic starter for the Kwali Sports day on the same day, well done Chinasa!!
The CAD was informative and a fantastic starter for the Kwali Sports day on the same day, well done Chinasa!!
IMPACT KWALI (VSO ICS Nigeria) 