Health and fitness
Eight exercises for functional fitness
Pat Keenan discovers the intelligent kitchen and learns how to sauté the perfect scallop from a Michelin Star chef.
Dead bug exercise
One of the skills we acquire later in life is the ability to filter out information that either doesn’t apply to us, isn’t of interest, or just wasn’t meant for us in the first place. For the most part, this selective deafness serves us well – who cares what Beyoncé and Jay Z have decided to name their twins, anyway? Or whether boot-cut jeans are so horribly passé that they’re about to become acceptable again? Simply knowing these things might displace something useful from my brain, like the lyrics to 24 Hours From Tulsa, for instance. But the filtering process can cut out things we should know, but have wrongly decided, perhaps subliminally don’t concern us any more. Like strength exercises. On the subject of fitness, a lady in her 70s recently said to me: “I don’t need to build
Conor O’Hagan reports that physiotherapists and occupational therapists agree that the most important aspect of keeping physically active as we age is maintaining what’s called ‘functional fitness’. muscles or join a parkrun – I just need to stop falling over.” But physiotherapists and occupational therapists agree that the most important aspect of keeping physically active as we age is maintaining what’s called functional fitness. Functional fitness refers to exercises that improve daily activity, challenging balance and coordination while improving strength and range of motion. Rather than targetting weight and appearance, it’s focussed on performance and function, making daily activities easier and safer.
A functional exercise should be a multi-joint exercise and, ideally, should work the upper and lower body. In daily activities, we use our body as a whole, though an activity may be more upper- or lower-body in emphasis, we still rely on the other half for stability and support. Pushing a shopping trolley, loading things into a car, and putting shopping away into cupboards are all examples of total body activities. Functional exercises are movements that strengthen your body in a functional way, not only moving you in every direction, but also by having you lift the types of awkward weights that we tend to have to carry in daily life.
Senior Times l May - June 2020 l www.seniortimes.ie 80
