Functional Fitness

 

Functional Fitness relates to the basic human movements of daily living. All day long we bend, lift, push, pull and twist.

 Young people do it as part of playing and they enjoy all of it. However; too many older people have an increasing amount of difficulty with the basic functional movements of daily living.

 Most gyms and fitness programs are based on body building programs with which we all grew up. We were sold all kinds of exercise equipment and training programs that claimed to help us become more fit. That has meant “build bigger muscles”, with the body builder image in mind.

 Did it work?

 I often wonder how many millions of pieces of equipment are sitting unused in basements, closets, and under beds, completely useless. Most of it owned by people that are overweight and unhealthy.

 In spite of all that equipment, many of those people are still experiencing:

  1. A loss of muscle mass
  2. A loss of strength
  3. An increase in body fat percentage
  4. A loss of aerobic capacity
  5. An in
  6. ...
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Aging Curve

 

 

This is an illustration I developed over several years.

The Aging Curve is a graph showing our lifeline from independence in our early years through the acquisition of functional abilities and the loss of these same functional abilities later in life. 

The black arrows (rising from birth on the left in the graph and declining on the right) show a normal Aging Curve and how it may sink below the dependency threshold later in life. 

We age in two ways: Primary Aging, which is the number of years lived and Secondary Aging, which is the impact of diseases, accidents, injuries and our environment. These secondary impacts all push downward on our Aging Curve. I work hard to push back upward. I want my Aging Curve to remain as high as possible, as long as possible. 

I am doing that with my Lifestyle. My tools are exercise 🏃🏻‍♂️and nutrition🍓. These are the two components of Fitness.  I insist on my lifestyle controlling my body; I will not let a body, that I am able  control, take c...

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