Physical fitness is one thing that everyone old or young; fit or unfit, needs to include in their daily routine. Your weight, BMI or occupation should not factor into whether you take physical fitness importantly or not. One can only enjoy life to its fullest when one is physically fit, active and healthy. Physical fitness is an integral part of everyone’s life and even more so for an athlete. However, before we delve into the evident importance of physical fitness for athletes let’s talk about what physical fitness entrails and how it can be achieved.
Physical fitness is to the body what fine tuning is to our weapons. Without tuning our weapon to our needs we can’t perform well and so similarly physical fitness enables us to perform to our highest potential. When physical fitness is mentioned what comes to mind is the performance level of our hearts, lungs and our muscles. The performance level and condition of all of these make up our fitness level thus making us look, feel and perform our best. Another , somewhat hidden, factor that is affected by the optimum function of our physical body is our mental capacity. Since what we do with our whole body has to have some effect on our mind, physical fitness can be linked to improve and assist mental fitness as well. So one can say that if you are physically efficient you are on your way to becoming a more mentally efficient being.
If we take a survey that includes people from all age groups, body weights and professions we can bet that most of them, irrespective of whether they workout or not, can name one benefit that comes from being physically fit. It is common knowledge that being physically fit allows one to live a more active lifestyle, beat and control diseases like diabetes and/or hypertension, maintain optimum weight and motor functions, give you a boost of self confidence and energy and endless more. However for the sake of this article, we will only talk about the top benefits that shooters can experience if they make physical fitness part of their daily routine. The first thing that comes to any athlete’s mind when talking about physical fitness is strength and endurance. By customising your daily physical fitness routines you can make specific targets and achieve them through training. Muscle strength and endurance are extremely important for shooters because we have to stay in tough positions for long durations of time. So if we don’t train our muscles to endure the strain that comes along with shooting they will have a tendency to tire easily and affect your game in a negative way.
Now let’s move on to the second thing that comes to mind when we talk about physical fitness, resting heart rates. When we do a good amount of cardio exercise our body and heart lean to adapt, for the better, and so with the increase in regular cardio exercise and fitness our resting heart rate starts to go down. It is well known that when we workout, do physical labour, are under stress or in a high pressure situation our heart starts to beat fast as a response to the adrenalin that is being pumped and as a natural to our environment. So it is only obvious that if our heart rate while we rest reduces then our heart rate when we are working out or under pressure will also decrease as compared to before. Thus it is very important for shooters to have a very good resting heart rate so that when they are put under pressure during matches and finals their increased heart rate is also not as high as expected.
Keeping heart rates in mind another aspect of our lives that is positively affected by having a regular fitness routine is our mental health. It is found in many studies that those who are physically fit and workout regularly tend to be less stressed as due to the hormones released during exercises. This should be considered by shooters as a very useful side effect of physical fitness because stress and the ability to control it is one of the main challenges shooters are faced with during any high pressure situation. Another benefit of being physically active and fit is discipline. Having a fitness routine also brings about a certain level of discipline and activeness in everyone’s lives. If you have a fitness routine that you have to stick to you are more likely to have a well planned out daily routine and are less likely to laze around and avoid your chores and daily goals. This discipline is important in every athlete’s life and shooters are no different and so all shooters should definitely have at least a basic physical fitness routine that they should follow regularly.
So by the end we realise that shooting isn’t a physically passive sport and that it does it does not require any form or level of physical fitness. On the contrary along with being able to take on the mental pressure of this sport it is equally important to train in physical fitness because it not only improves your physical ability to perform better but also enables you to mentally perform better. This is why there can be no reason for any shooter to avoid or ignore physical fitness and exercise.