What about powerlifters or weightlifters? Super strong. Get winded walking up a flight of stairs.

My point is, there is no one universal definition of fitness.

The most reliable measure I've heard of is belly fat, which you can measure with a calipers. But you can't wish away belly fat with positive thinking, so I think the writers of this article are taking this study a little too far, IMO.

> What about powerlifters or weightlifters? Super strong. Get winded walking up a flight of stairs.

Sounds like a myth people believe about weight lifters.

Belly fat would be a poor measurement of a lot of powerlifters fitness as well.

The article seems to be mixing up "fitness" and "chance of death", which, while they are related, are probably not as directly correlated as they seem to be in the article.

Yes, the article seems to take liberties from the two studies it quotes.

But I also am skeptical of the underlying studies. So many factors in mortality rate I'm having a hard time believing they were able to control for all of those (weight, age, diet, exercise, family history, etc) and isolate "positive thinking."

Belly fat sems like a very unreliable proxy too. You can definitely be skinny without being fit in any of the usual senses, and you can have a fair amount of fat while still having good cardio, strength, etc.

I think VO2 is a piece of a bigger fitness puzzle. With runners you also need to factor in lactate threshold. Not to mention running efficiency/economy.

At the high level I think of fitness as the combination of: Speed, Strength, Power, Endurance, Flexibility, and Balance.

Then athleticism would include all of the fitness indicators plus some sport-specific technique and skill (or proprioception).