Have you been working hard at the gym in an effort to achieve muscle gain? That’s a great first step in your fitness journey, but you also have to focus on both muscle recovery and feeding your body the supplements it needs in order to keep improving. Working out—and doing it right—will no doubt contribute to your overall health and wellbeing.

Regardless of if you’re new to lifting or an advanced lifter, the one thing you should know is this: The key to a strong, healthy lean body is nutrition.

Everyone has different body types, so it makes sense that everyone wants to achieve something different in their workout routine. There are many different ways to exercise and tone your body. Each type of exercise uses different muscles, which is why we see different results. Whether it’s gaining flexibility, burning fat, toning your arms, or increasing core muscle strength, there are different ways to shape your body to the way you want. 

You owe it to yourself to make fitness a priority. Physical fitness can help prevent more than 40 chronic diseases including potential killers such as diabetes, heart disease, obesity, hypertension, and even cancer.

But how do you know whether you're fit? Your overall fitness is a measure of four physical abilities — endurance, strength, balance, and flexibility — and body composition or body mass index (BMI). BMI tracks height and weight only while a body composition test, which calculates your fat and lean muscle mass, is an excellent indicator of overall fitness. For a more hands-on approach, try these personal trainer-approved fitness tests to see how you stack up.

Do you have trouble losing body fat, yet seem to gain it after even the smallest slip up with your diet? Or does it feel like you can eat for days without gaining an ounce? It could have something to do with your current body type. But is it really that simple? As personal trainers, we know just how complex body types can be. 

Let's explore them more in depth and analyze how they relate to overall body composition.