How Functionally Fit are You?

Never to Late to Get Better with Age

Quick Quiz answer yes or no

Can walk up stairs one foot on each step?

Can you get out of chair without using your arms?

Can you clip your own toenails?

Can you easily turn around when driving to see traffic?

Can you put on your pants without sitting down?

Can still reach items in your kitchen cabinets?

Can you walk a mile without being winded?

Can you carry your groceries into the house?

Can you pull a sweater over your head?

Can you carry a laundry basket of clothes?

If you answered no to 2 or more of the questions above, now is the time to start work on your functional fitness.  It is never too late to get more functionally fit.  Studies show that even a moderate amount of exercise can go a long way towards improving your physical functioning and maintaining your quality of life, even if you start later in life.

The main goal of functional fitness is to help you perform ordinary activities of life without hurting yourself or being slowed down because of stiffness and pain.  Everyday you count on your body to perform many daily activities.  Seniors who don’t work on their strength and agility find it progressively harder to get through their daily routines. That is why medical researchers are moving toward a definition of old age based on measurement of physical function versus chronological age.

“Exercise is the best tool we have against aging.  If it were a drug, it would be prescribed for everyone” – Dr. Gordon Lithgow

Every day you count on your body to do many different things, moving, bending, stretching, climbing, jumping and manipulating objects big and small.   You can’t do just one type of exercise and prevent or reverse the effects of aging.  According to the Mayo Clinic, functional fitness exercises train your muscles to work together and prepare them for daily tasks.  Functional training emphasizes whole body movements and addresses all 5 facets of fitness.

·       Core stability and strength

·       Flexibility

·       Balance

·       Muscle strength

·       Cardiovascular endurance

Core - Weak core muscles are why so many people have trouble with movements like getting in and out of chairs.  If you cannot sit down and get up out of dining room chair without using your arms, that is a sign you core needs work.  A strong core is vital to support your spine and keep it properly aligned.  With a weak core it is harder to control your movements and stability resulting in injuries to your back or other areas.  A strong core alleviates stress on other joints too because when you have a weak core your other joints, muscles and bones need to compensate.  Also, a strong core improves posture and breathing.  Better posture reduces your chances of getting a herniated disc or degeneration of the spine.

Flexibility – Lack of flexibility is responsible for approximately 80% of typical aches and pains of aging.  If you don’t make a point of moving your muscles and joints through their full range of motion, over time your body becomes tighter, which affects daily activities like reaching items from a cabinet, getting out of a car, driving a car, and dressing yourself, just to name a few.  According to Harvard researchers, inactivity kills more people than smoking.  A sedentary way of life is responsible for 1 in 10 deaths worldwide.  Sitting, one of the main culprits of loss of flexibility, results in tight hamstrings and hips. These tight muscles can affect the way you walk, stand and often the root cause of back pain.  With improved flexibility, normal household chores become easier and less likely to cause pain or injury. 

Balance – Balance is one of those physical abilities we take for granted; however, that ability to balance begins to weaken in our twenties.  1 in 3 Americans over 65 will take a stumble, which results can be disastrous.  Lack of balance can make ordinary activities like climbing and descending stairs or getting dressed, difficult.  Balance is a complex system that depends on a combination of physical abilities, proprioception, vision and inner ear system.  All of these senses tend to diminish over time as well as agility coordination, muscle strength, which you must possess to maintain balance.  The good news is there are simple exercises to preserve and improve your sense of balance, including static balance and dynamic balance.

Muscle Strength – Strength training becomes even more important once you are over fifty.  The old adage “Use it or Lose it”, cannot be more apropos in this case.  By age fifty 10% of muscle mass is gone and accelerates going forward.  We typically lose 15% muscle mass every decade after fifty.  Lack of muscle strength makes daily activities like lifting grocery bags, walking around the block, household chores, gardening and climbing stairs more difficult.  You need to maintain a certain amount of muscle mass and strength to be functionally fit.  One study of people over 74 years old, found 28% of males and 76% of females couldn’t lift 10 pounds, which is less than a typical bag of groceries.  Even though some muscle loss is inevitable with age, research suggests losses may be substantially reduced among people that stay active and perform some strength training.

Cardiovascular Endurance – To become or stay fit you need to challenge your cardiovascular system, which powers everything else. A strong cardiovascular system is needed to maintain your functional fitness.  If you get winded with simple activities like a walk around the block or going up stairs you need to talk to your doctor about starting to add cardio exercises to your routine. Cardio is the type of exercises most people associate with exercising, brisk walking, jogging, treadmill or exercise bike. Endurance exercises use large muscle movements to raise your heart rate and accelerate your breathing, causing you to work up a sweat.  There are 2 types of endurance exercises aerobic and anaerobic training.  Aerobic exercise is any activity that revs up your heart rate and breathing and keep them elevated for 30 minutes.  Many people do aerobic activities that are not very intense, which does not obtain the fitness level needed to improve their cardiovascular system.  Anaerobic training means high intensity exercises done in short burst lasting from 20 seconds to 1 full minute.  Anaerobic exercises increase strength, builds lean muscle mass and increases your body’s rate of oxygen consumption.  Endurance exercises increases blood flow, lowers blood pressure, reduces cholesterol level and improves brain function. 

Being functional fit is needed maintain your quality of life.  A recent AARP survey found 9 out of 10 seniors want to stay in their home through retirement and only 14% expect to need day to day assistance.  Unfortunately, a study of 8,000 older Americans, showed 40% needed help to get around or accomplish basic daily tasks. 

A personal trainer, who understands the body mechanics of older individuals and knows how to deal with weaknesses to avoid injuries is vital to starting on the road to improve your functional fitness.  You can get older, stronger and fitter at the same time, ask me how I can help.

“Getting fit is nowhere near as hard as dealing with the infirmities of old age.” – Author James P. Owen