You can be fat and very strong, but unable to hike a mountain vigorously for 6 hours. You can be a fast runner or swimmer but unfit in most ways other than cardio endurance.
To participate to the maximum in all that life offers or demands, we preach a doctrine of "Fitness for Life." This is not training for a specific purpose (ie a specific sport, pure strength, or aesthetics), but just to maintain or, preferably, improve fitness after age 30 or 40 or 50 or whatever for people with relatively sedentary (less than 5 hrs/wk of physically-challenging or strenuous effort - not walking). Balanced, general functional fitness for strength, endurance, and athleticism builds energy, attractiveness and sexuality, effectiveness - and the mental toughness that comes from the discipline of physical training.
First, some terms:
Conditioning, or Athletic Conditioning, usually refers to your overall athletic preparedness. "Conditioning" can focus on retrieving or building your speed, agility, endurance, muscle fitness, body composition, and the like. General conditioning-specific activities, like calisthenics, often just use body weight and some light weights with very high reps (20+), and no rest. Burpees, lunges, box jumps, ball slams, roll-ups, and step-ups are classic conditioning exercises but there are tons of them.
Cardio/endurance training is one compnent of the above. An hour of intense, no-rest calisthenics is powerful and exhausting cardio/endurance training, as is HIIT cardio. If you aren't short of breath, it's not "cardio." (It's not "exercise" either. "Exercise" refers to exertion.) For naturalistic HIIT, a tough tennis lesson where coach runs you ragged, or a basketball game.
Bodybuilding is an approach to balanced muscle improvement. It entails about 5 sets of semi-high reps (8-12) of 50-70% of your max weights, with only a minute rest between sets. Contrary to the sound of it, it's not primarily meant to look good at the beach (but nobody wants to look nasty with lots or all of their clothes off).
Powerlifting is an approach designed to improve brute strength and power. This entails lower reps with higher weights, and more rest between sets. Often, out of shape newbies need a good period of powerlifting before shifting to bodybuilding. Experienced people often alternate between the body-building approach and the powerlift approach every few months to maintain muscle function.
All of the above play a role in general fitness.
I'll review our recommendations for people in half-decent health below the fold. Feel free to offer comments or critiques.
1. Get your weight in order. If scrawny, eat more. If fat, eat less - if fat, you don't really need hardly any food at all except a little dose of sugar before a workout. In either case, you will not survive a hard and fast hour of calisthenics unless you deal with your body composition. Nutrition when working on fitness? That's another topic. I am in decent condition, but an hour calis class leaves me crawling out the door. Pitiful. Humbling. I love it though, for the physical and mental toughness it builds. If I were underweight or overweight, I could not survive it at all.
2. Cardio fitness/endurance. We believe in HIIT cardio, and that long periods (like 50-60 minutes) of moderate cardio (running, jogging, biking, fast-walking, rowing, elliptical, swimming etc) do not provide much fitness gain for time spent although it's better than sitting. For weight loss, such things are useless. 20 minutes of HIIT twice a week is good cardio. Alternating sprints with moderate rates is good for all of the above "cardio" activities. Contrary to the experts though, I think throwing in an hour of moderately-stressful (heart rate well- above walking but without sprinting) cardio weekly or every two weeks helps keep me semi-prepared for long hikes and sports because it's more demanding than most hiking.
3. Muscle and Bone. Bones and skeletal muscle atrophy without regular stress and controlled abuse. Cardio does nothing for muscle and bone, unless you are a lunatic without a day job or spend 8 hrs/day hiking up mountains with a heavy pack. Unless your day job is loading and unloading trucks, we need to work with weights to prevent bone and muscle atrophy. Women especially, due to their proneness to osteoporosis. Unfortunately, it is difficult for most amateurs to pursue an effective weights program (whether powerlifting, bodybuilding, or whatever) without training advice or supervision. Bodybuilding programs get a bum rap. We need muscles - not bulging ones - for full functionality. At the same time, nobody, male or female, wants to look like a weakling. I do about 50 minutes twice weekly of bodybuilding and powerlifting with weights. I have to do this or I feel lousy and lazy mentally and physically. My trainer pushes me with this beyond what I could ever do on my own and makes sure I do it properly.
4. Calisthenics. Calisthenics are about using strength, building aggressive cardio and muscular endurance, and building athleticism. Most gyms offer good 1-hr calisthenics classes under various supposedly-inspiring names. No heavy weights, all high-rep stuff at a fast pace. Gals tend to do better than guys. I think calis are the best general fitness challenges. On vacations, Mrs. BD whips me through the morning program for an hour before breakfast. How many lunges, jumping jacks, burpees, roll-ups, and push-ups can I do? Good stuff. She wants a strong and high-energy spouse. She can be nasty and cruel about it but she says it's for my own good, and I hate to disappoint a wife who gave her life to me. The other muscle work and the cardio work that you do all funnel into an hour of killer calis. Calis is where it all comes together. Right now I get back to my usual daily exercise routine and only do 1 session/week of killer calis but I need 2 and aim for that. What about Crossfit? I think they are much maligned. The regular Crossfit classes are good calisthenics and lighter weights that you can do at your own level, at your own pace, in a congenial and encouraging atmosphere.
5 1/2 hours/wk. That's all. It is Hard Work, though. Plus all recreational activities which don't count as real exercise. Commit, or don't bother, but you will be glad if you committed when you turn 60 or 70 and can still do everything you did at 40. Possibly more.
