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 \o7and \f7breezes 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."
