What is FITT?

It is a way of monitoring your exercise program. FITT is an acronym for frequency, intensity, time, and type. The first, frequency, is how often you do the intended exercise. After this comes intensity which is just how intense the exercise is. Third comes time, and this is how long you intend to do the exercise for. Finally comes type and this refers to the type of exercise you intend on doing.

Mainstream Recommendation

This is most commonly used in the weight loss industry

• Frequency: 5-6 times a week
• Intensity: Moderate
• Time: 15 to 60 minutes
• Type: Any exercise

What is Frequency?

As stated above, frequency is how often you choose to exercise. This is important because when you train and exercise, your muscles start to tear. If you exercise too often it will keep tearing the muscle and not allow it to heal. You would need to figure out the perfect balance by providing enough stress for your body to adapt and enough time for your body to heal the torn muscles.

What is Intensity?

Intensity is how intense the exercise you are doing is. This is another major part of exercising and it ties in with frequency. If you do a very intense exercise, you could injure yourself. To fix this problem, you would have to find an exercise that makes you work hard enough so that you are adapting but not so hard that you can injure yourself.

What is Time?

Time is how long you intend on doing each exercise whether it is 15 minutes or 60 minutes. Time usually depends on how fit you are and what exercise you have chosen to do. If you do an exercise that is intense, you will not need to do it for too long. The recommendation for how long you should exercise for is 15-60 minutes but you can narrow it down. If you are a lower fitness level then you should start off by doing 15-25 minute sessions and go on from there.

What is Type?

Type is very self-explanatory; it is the type of exercise you are doing. The reason type matters is because you should know what you want to do whether that be weight loss or muscular strength improvements.

What is SAID?

Said is an acronym for Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand which means that when the body is stressed at one particular point, that point will start to adapt so in the future you are able to withstand that form of stress.

Adaptation is Specific

If a tennis player uses his or her right hand to swing the racket at the ball, her bones will be much larger in her right arm because of the impact that she receives. Over time as he or she hits the ball with the racket her bones take some of the impact making it so the bone will get larger and tougher so next time it won't impact him or her as much. This exact same concept ties in with muscles causing them to get bigger the more they get stressed. Also as your muscles and bones adapt, your brain will also adapt. One example of this is if you play an instrument such as the violin, the part of your brain that controls hand coordination will grow larger.

What is the Right Amount of Stress?

The right amount of stress just means not too little or not too much. If you have too little stress your body wont be adapting to anything so you wont be seeing any improvements. If you put too much stress on our joints, you might potentially injure yourself or cause a burnout. If you go for a run everyday. and you aren't seeing a difference, either you are not putting enough stress or you are putting too much stress and are not allowing your muscles to heal.

Conclusion

FITT and SAID are two great acronyms that help us exercise and without them we wouldn't understand how to exercise the most efficient and reliable way possible.