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 Health & Beauty | November 2005 
Real-Life Muscle
 Jeannine Stein - LATimes
The world is an unstable place. And your exercise routine needs to deal with that.
Weight machines, most of them anyway, aren't enough. They may build biceps or tone thighs, but they won't strengthen your core or tune up your neuromuscular connections.
But functional fitness will. The new buzzwords in the fitness industry are about building a body that looks fantastic in a mirror and breezes through the real world, with its pitted sidewalks, heavy grocery bags and rambunctious toddlers.
Gyms and personal trainers are increasingly preaching this gospel as an umbrella approach to exercise — and, though research has been limited, studies in older adults back them up.
It's "a larger, more holistic approach," says Todd Durkin, owner of Fitness Quest 10, a personal training and workout facility in San Diego. "You're looking at where the body is weak, where it's breaking down — looking at the body as a whole."
This broadening interest explains the explosion of exercise "boot camps," and to a lesser extent the profusion of yoga and Pilates classes. Suddenly old-fashioned calisthenics such as push-ups and squat thrusts are in vogue again. All of these use the body's own weight as resistance, focus on dynamic movement, and demand core strength.
Gina Miranda discovered this style of training after repeatedly picking up her 9-pound infant daughter. "A couple of times I pulled my back out lifting her," says the 32-year-old San Diego mom. "It's just a few pounds, but it was really hard on me."
With the help of an instructor, she balanced on stability balls, ran agility ladders like a football player and weaved through cones — all components of functional fitness. A few months later, she says, "the strain was gone. And as she got heavier and heavier, I was stronger and stronger. I felt like I could carry her and get on with my day."
Beyond Weights
The equipment inventory for functional fitness includes free weights, medicine balls, stability balls and cable weight machines, all of which work multiple muscle groups simultaneously.
Doing a biceps curl with a dumbbell while sitting on a stability ball engages core muscles that help the body stabilize, for instance. Doing a biceps curl on a traditional fixed weight machine just isolates the biceps.
We almost never isolate muscle groups in day-to-day living, says Mike Bracko, a Canadian exercise physiologist and fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine: "When you pick up groceries you are using your biceps, but you're also bending your knees and using your back."
It's also important to counter what we overdo, such as sitting in front of a computer or bending over to pick things up. (See graphic.)
The price of ignoring functional fitness? Aches, pains and possibly worse. "You can have micro-traumas to the body," Bracko says. "Then one day you bend down to pick up a pencil, twist, and your back goes out."
A degenerative disc disease forced Cindy Swikard to stop running and prompted her doctor to suggest back surgery. The landscape company executive from San Diego nixed that. Instead she developed a workout with a trainer that includes core exercises and back hyperextensions. It has decreased her pain and allowed her to run, ski, hike and cycle again. "I can do whatever I want and not die," says Swikard, 47. "I can do normal stuff like sitting down, going up and down stairs. I don't ever get that tiredness or backache."
Her posture also improved: "My back is in a neutral position, and my stomach is tight. I do it without even thinking about it."
Original Role Models
Bracko floats the theory that this type of training emerged from the competitive sports world. Coaches, trainers and physical therapists continually analyze players' workouts to optimize performance on the field.
"If football players are doing a [traditional] bench press, their arms will be strong, but how does that translate into game performance?" Bracko says. "Maybe what they should be doing is a bench press while standing up." That might better simulate how a lineman blocks opponents.
Paula Tett, corporate education manager for the Sports Club/LA, believes that functional fitness — with its emphasis on strength — evolved from competitive bodybuilders' training. These muscle-bound athletes became the first role models for people interested in strength training and weight lifting.
"They were doing these exercises to enhance their sport," she says, "but then regular people started entering their domain." Now there are octogenarians coming to the gym, as well as overweight middle-aged people, weekend warriors and teens — all with widely varying fitness goals and little need for bulging biceps. Strength training had to evolve.
But typical weight-lifting routines can put people in a rut, says Durkin. "When you sit on a bench and lift a weight, you're shutting down your neuromuscular education. You need to fire it up and do more dynamic training, standing on your feet and moving."
That simple change will take your training to a higher level. Plyometrics will improve explosive power and fast-twitch muscles (used for activities like sprinting and jumping). Doing sit-ups, push-ups or other exercises on unstable props like stability balls will increase core strength and balance. Running along an agility ladder will improve coordination.
The rewards, says Durkin, are well worth the stepped-up training: "I have clients who went hiking in Spain for six weeks. They were so confident that they could climb hills carrying backpacks."
There's also a joyful sense of accomplishment that comes with mastering a challenging pose or acing an agility drill, more so than with adding another 10 pounds to a weight stack. "A lot of our trainers do athletic drills and games," says Tett. "It's definitely making it more fun for people."
New Tools For Training
The equipment industry too is onto this trend. Consumers can choose gear as varied as a $25 stability ball and a $3,000 Precor Functional Trainer, a cable machine that works the upper and lower body and core.
Early this year Technogym debuted Kinesis, a whole system of pulley machines in which every station allows for a full range of motion as well as unconventional movements, such as simulating freestyle swimming while on a stability ball.
Much of what we know about the importance of functional fitness comes from gerontology. Research studies show a marked improvement in older adults who worked on balance, agility and flexibility three times a week for an hour. After eight weeks, there was significant improvement in activities such as walking and getting up from a chair.
Kids can benefit too. At Lanier Middle School in Fairfax, Va., agility drills, balance and coordination are the core of an after-school program called Functional Fitness 4 Kids. It leaves out traditional weight lifting and competitive sports.
Program founder and PE teacher Denise Moser says sports-minded kids have improved strength and endurance when they do play team sports. "It's surprising to some of the males especially, who thought they had to lift heavy weights to get strong."
For the not-so-sports-minded, there's something else: "Some of the girls in the program started with 1-pound dumbbells," says Moser, "and by the end of the second year they were up to 8 pounds. Because of that, their confidence is just unbelievable. The majority of kids aren't going to be the all-star on the sports team, but they can still become fit doing this."
Functional Fitness
Doing the same motions day after day, whether on the job or in a workout, tends to weaken unused muscles and can lead to injury. Functional fitness exercises strengthen those muscles, making the body better able to handle routine movements. Check with a physician before beginning any exercise program.
Office workers: Usually sit and work at computers, so shoulders tend to be rounded forward.
To work the upper back
• Take an exercise band and hold it in front of you with both hands.
• Slowly move your hands apart as far as they can go.
• Hold that position for five counts, and relax.
• Repeat this exercise about 10 times or as many times as you can.
Construction workers: Constantly bend forward to pick things up. To counter this, try the common yoga pose upward-facing dog.
To stretch the abdominals
• Lie facing the floor, stretching the legs back with the tops of the feet on the floor.
• Arms are by your side, elbows bent, palms on the floor.
• Press hands against the floor, straightening the arms and lifting the torso and legs a few inches.
Runners: Forward lunges with dumbbells help strengthen quadriceps and hamstrings, which also help strengthen knees.
To work the legs
• Stand with feet hip-width apart.
• Take a large step forward, bending the knees 90 degrees.
• The front knee should be in line with the foot. The back knee should not touch the floor.
• Push off the forward foot to bring legs back to the starting position. Repeat with opposite leg.
Source: Mike Bracko, exercise physiologist |
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