What We Do

Mission

The mission of the Maryland State Advisory Council on Physical Fitness is to educate, advise, and encourage the citizens of Maryland to gain health benefits and enhance the quality of their lives through regular physical activity.*

Goals

The Council on Physical Fitness acts in an advisory capacity to the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The Council works collaboratively with a broad range of agencies and organizations to accomplish the following goals:

• collect and assemble physical activity-related information
  
• disseminate information among Maryland citizens to promote regular physical activity
• maintain liaisons with state and local agencies (e.g., education, planning and transportation) to improve opportunities for regular physical activity among all Maryland citizens.

*Physical activity is any bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles that results in an expenditure of energy.

Physical fitness is a measure of a person's ability to perform physical activities that require endurance, strength, or flexibility and is determined by a combination of regular activity and genetically inherited ability.

Exercise is physical activity that is planned or structured. It involves repetitive bodily movement done to improve or maintain one or more of the following components of physical fitness: cardio-respiratory endurance, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility and body.