According to the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI), apart from the many organic benefits, the main functions of movement concern the preservation and development of the organism as a whole, increasing information for the brain, and the expressive potential of the individual (in the form of language, culture, motor intelligence, and motor expressiveness). In a nutshell, movement involves growth, and acquisition of new information, which leads to increased knowledge of ourselves, the space around us, and the relationship between the body, space, and others. In other words, moving also means evolving.
Despite these undeniable advantages, progress has meant that we spend an average of 2 h a day traveling, 7–8 h in front of desks or behind public counters, 3–4 h sitting down to eat or watch television, and 6–7 h lying down to sleep. Therefore, we are likely to spend around 20 h out of every 24 h leading a sedentary lifestyle. Paradoxically, this triggers a vicious circle: sedentary life leads to a progressive deterioration of motor skills, which is then accompanied by a greater “effort” in overcoming sedentariness, in turn, followed by further deterioration of motor skills, the appearance of instability and fear of falling, worsening of motor disability, and loss of independence, finally culminating in social and psychological isolation, leading to the appearance or increase of frailty, understood as (age-dependent) organic and functional decay.
Therefore, hypokinesis deserves to be considered a serious “syndrome,” which appears in sedentary individuals due to a lack of physical activity, bad life habits, and accumulation of psychophysical stress. It usually defines abstinent, hypotonic, and overweight individuals and manifests itself with negative consequences on all organic systems (weakening them and putting them at risk of pathologies typical of senile age), especially on the muscular ligamentous apparatus (loss of tone, strength, and muscular resistance), on the cardiovascular apparatus (poor blood circulation of the muscle districts, heart fatigue, tachycardia, and hypertension), on the respiratory system (reduced vital capacity, increase in residual volume), on the cytoskeletal system (reduction in density and appearance of degenerative phenomena, up to osteoporosis and greater susceptibility to fractures), on the endocrine/metabolic system (slowing of basal metabolism, imbalance of body mass, obesity, hypercholesterolemia, appearance of insulin resistance), and even on the neurovegetative system (alteration of mood, anxiety, and depression). All these have been brilliantly summarized by a very recent report of the World Health Organization (WHO), which shows that physical inactivity accounts for 5.5% of total mortality, preceded only by hypertension (12.8%), cigarette smoking (8.7%), and hyperglycemia (5.8%), therefore out weighing obesity (4.8%) and hypercholesterolemia (4.5%). On the contrary, physical exercise can contribute to reducing global mortality by up to 30%, mortality from 40% to 70% due to fracture of the femur, from 30% to 40% due to diabetes, by 30% due to cancer (especially colorectal), from 20% to 35% due to cardiovascular diseases, and from 20% to 30% due to degenerative diseases of the central nervous system (especially dementia). These enormous benefits are manifested through a myriad of positive effects on the organism, mainly represented by an improvement in the cardiovascular function and circulatory systems, an increase in muscle mass and efficiency, an increase in motor coordination, weight control, an improvement in metabolism (lower cholesterol, improved insulin tolerance, reduced constipation), and significant psychological benefits (reduced anxiety, increased energy and self-esteem, improved sleep patterns, a tendency to socialize, an improvement in the quality of life as a whole). Assuming that all the models demonstrate a close relationship (mostly dose-dependent) between the intensity and duration of physical exercise and subsequent changes, the positive effects on the individual organs and apparatuses are briefly summarized in Table 1.
Table1. Positive effects of physical exercise
It is helpful to provide some definitions to understand the aspects dealt with in the following parts of this chapter. The term “physical activity” refers to muscular effort that results in energy consumption greater than that in resting conditions; the term “physical exercise” refers instead to a com plex of repetitive, programmed, and structured actions aimed at carrying out a well-defined activity (e.g., running, cycling, lifting weights) that also leads to an improvement in physical fitness and health. Finally, the term “sporting activity” implies a form of physical exercise practiced systematically and/or continuously (both for competitive and noncompetitive purposes). In the collective imagination, physical activity and exercise are often considered synonymous, although this does not correspond to reality. Physical activity indicates any form of movement that is different from sedentariness and involves a greater expenditure of energy than when at rest (for example, fetching the newspaper, doing housework, washing). In contrast, physical exercise is structurally aimed at achieving an athletic performance and is constantly associated with a progressive improvement in functional capacities (athletic performance). In other words, although in both cases it is certainly possible to improve fitness and functional capacity compared to sedentariness, the gain due to physical exercise is substantially more significant.
