What a difference Functional Training made in my ability to prepare our home for sale and make a cross country move! Functional Training for the Active Aging Adult is designed to empower us in daily skills such as Squatting, Lunging, Gait, Hinging, Pushing and Pulling. These are movements we must be able to perform to maintain our independence, mobility and stability.
Beginning in Feb 2021 we made the decision we needed to do repairs and upgrades on our home before placing on the market. We quickly ordered a POD container and loaded the majority of our furniture, underestimating the amount of time required to be market ready. We had two chairs, a television and slept on the floor for over a month and a half. (Did you know that being able to rise from the floor is a major predictor of longevity?)
Squats Matter!!
My first task was taping rooms before painting. It’s incredible how much time this takes! More than time, this task demands repeated squatting down, lunging to the sides on a single knee, and reaching to apply the tape to baseboards. Once that job was complete, it was time to carry the ladders from the garage to the room for painting. Our tri-level home had high ceilings over open staircases! Painting ceilings over open staircases is not a task to take lightly. Hubby was busy sorting items, boxing them up and carrying to the garage for either the donation or transporting stack. He, too, was repeatedly squatting, hinging, pulling and pushing items in the process.
Why do I break these tasks down this way? The National Institute of Health recommends Functional Training to support Endurance, Strength, Balance and Flexibility for the Active Aging Adult. The younger body typically has abundant endurance and strength accompanying their robust muscle development. However, in our 30’s the body begins to progressively lose a percentage of muscle mass. In fact, the physically inactive adult can lose 3-5% of their muscle mass each decade, resulting in a condition called Sarcopenia. This muscle deterioration greatly accelerates in the mid 60’s, lessening strength, endurance, power, mobility, and results in the frailty, balance challenges, and likelihood of falls and fractures often seen in the elderly.
Isn’t All Strength Training Functional?
This question is widely misunderstood by fitness professionals who have not studied Functional Training and the Actively Aging Body. The training methods that younger athletes incorporate for muscle hypertrophy and esthetics are not appropriate for the Adult-Over-50. The reason is a hypertrophied muscle does not result in the endurance, flexibility and power mature bodies need to be able to sustain activities, such as painting walls and ceilings for a prolonged amount of time. One rep max lifts don’t deliver the ability to pack boxes and carry down flights of stairs for hours a day in the moving process. Functional Training prepares the mature body for real life events, sustained for considerable time, and in events like preparing for a move, the movements are repeated multiple times for many days in a row.
My painting process entailed prepping and painting seven rooms in 5 days. From the initial carry of the paint can from the hardware store, from the car, into the house and up the stairs I repeatedly lifted, poured paint, climbed ladders, and rolled paint on walls and ceilings. Painting ceilings means a lot of looking up, reaching overhead, reaching down to load more paint and raising arms overhead again.
Every time the paint tray needed more paint meant another climb down the ladder, then up again to continue the process. This continued day after day until dinner time.
Each morning when I awoke and got dressed, I would feel sore upper back muscles, my glutes hurt, calves were tight, yet I could continue the process each day from early am until evening. Before I got up the ladder, I knew it was important to be as Flexible as possible, so targeted stretching was the start of my day. Let me explain, hiring a professional to do this hard work for us was not an option. I was so grateful for a body that had the Endurance for the task. When I was on the top rung of a very tall ladder, I was grateful I learned how to maintain Balance while my head was moving, my center of gravity shifting, and my arm reaching as far to the side as possible with the paint roller. Each time the ladder needed to be moved it also meant Hinging and reaching to move drop cloths, removing electrical outlet plates, making sure tape was securely placed on the baseboards and then continuing Pushing and Pulling the roller and paint brush over the walls and ceilings.
Lift and Lower, Twist and Turn
Fast forward this process to today. I arrived in Arizona ahead of my hubby who remained in WA to downsize possessions in the garage and pull remaining needed items in a U-Haul. He arrived at 6:30 am, ahead of the heat of the Arizona Summer sun. We proceeded to unload and carry items into the house as quickly as possible to avoid working into the 100+ degree heat of the day. Many of the items were not excessively heavy, but it was many hours of repeated lifting, stepping up and down from the van, squatting or lunging down to place items in the house that were again calling on the Functional Skills of Endurance, Balance, Strength and Flexibility. Had we been training in the traditional methods of targeting different muscle groups, the carryover into functional capacity would have been lacking. I’m not sure we could have done all the work we needed to have carried on until completion well over a month later.
Aging and Preparing for the Unexpected
Five years ago, we made the decision to fly and bring my failing 94-year-old mother to live with us. The required stamina, commitment and stress of providing around the clock care for an ailing parent is something perhaps you have experienced or observed in others. That was my first experience of how important Functional Training was to meet an unexpected need. We continued caring for my mom in our home until she passed two and a half years later. Today I reflect on this moving process as my second convincing experience of how critical it is to actively work to maintain muscle mass as an Aging Adult. It does not require an excessive amount of training to stop and reverse sarcopenia. Working with a knowledgeable Functional Trainer just twice a week can maintain your independence and ability to do the things and be with the people that are most important to you now. We never know what experiences life may bring our way but preserving our ability to be resilient and responsive in the process is a tremendous gift we have the opportunity to give ourselves each day.
Be Well, Be Strong!
I’m Mary Draper, Certified in Applied Functional Science through Gray Institute, also a NASM Personal Trainer, ACE Functional Training Specialist, Pain Free Movement Specialist Level 2, and hold the AEA Water Exercise Certification. I have been in the fitness industry over 30 years, training adults in water and on land.