AN ESSAY...

The concept of fitness...

People have practiced sports since ancient times; however, in recent years, the concept of fitness has appeared. The concept of fitness blends the benefits of sports to our health with purely esthetic aspects.

Exercise has always been synonymous of good health. Ancient societies like the Greeks and the Romans, considered that sports were a gift of the gods to the human kind, and their governments promote the practice of exercise. Whoever practices sports was considered in an upper position, close to perfection. Later on, close to the Middle Ages, sports were more related to medicine, and started to be recommended by primitive doctors and human scientists like the Italian Leonardo Davinci. Not in vain, because they realize that people started to feel much better after exercise. More recently, medics and psychologists notice that sports also help to control one of the modern illnesses: the stress. In fact, now days, everybody knows that sport is the best way to stress control.

But exercise has another objective in human life, and it was something that even the Romans and Greeks knew: it improves our physical appearance. Miguel Angelo, the great artist of Middle Age noticed that when he sculpted his famous David, a perfectly built young man, representing the famous king of Israel.

So, based on the idea that exercise improves our physical appearance, people started to make changes in their way of living after practicing sports: they started to take care of diet, just as an example.

As a result of the combination of both ideas, in recent years, a new concept has risen about practicing sports: the concept of fitness that combines the goodness of exercising for our health with the results to our physical appearance. Fitness nowadays is not just an idea, it is a way of life. Gyms are not just for bodybuilders but also for all those who want to enlarge their lives and to improve their quality of living.

In conclusion, sports have evolved and now include not only those who have some aptitude to them, but also those who have the attitude to practice them and want to improve their health and, a the same time, to look better.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/fitness