Ask the Experts: Hal Higdon on achieving functional fitness
20 October 2008
Many qualified experts on training and nutrition use TrainingPeaks to help manage their business. Now, a select few are offering professional training and nutrition advice on our blog. Read on to learn what Hal Higdon has to say about functional fitness, and submit a question of your own below!
Achieving Functional Fitness
For a healthy life, blend aerobics, strength and flexibility
By Hal Higdon
Author, Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide
A comedian once joked about people he saw jogging in the park: “All they achieve is dying in good health.” A funny line, but consider the alternative! If you hope to avoid spending your last several years in a nursing home, focus on functional fitness. Consider the following three areas: 1) aerobics, 2) strength, and 3) flexibility.
1. Aerobics: Researchers have proved that you need not run marathons to significantly impact your lifestyle. Ralph Paffenbarger, M.D. analyzed data from Harvard University alumni and suggested that even minimum levels of exercise—gardening, for example—would result in two to three extra years of life. Dr. Kenneth H. Cooper, author of Aerobics, claims that exercising for a half hour three to five days a week will result in your living six to eight years longer.
“People who are fitter do better and live longer,” says Gary Balady, M.D., a Boston Medical Center cardiologist. Most of the physical changes chalked up to growing old are not due to aging, but rather to inactivity.
Participating in some form of aerobic exercise, thus, is necessary for good health. Walking, running, swimming, cycling, even cross-country skiing: You need to choose some activity capable of getting you at least slightly out of breath.
2. Strength: But that takes you only one-third of the way to getting in shape. Running targets the leg muscles. Bicycling and walking do the same. Although swimming strengthens the upper body, it provides minimal leg strength.
Long before cross-training became an important buzz word, Michael L. Pollock, Ph.D. of the University of Florida studied aging masters athletes. He decided that what separated the merely good athletes from the best was that the latter also strength trained.
Dr. Pollock later developed fitness guidelines for the American College of Sports Medicine. The ACSM now recommends strength training two or three days a week in addition to aerobic activities. Twenty to thirty minutes a day: That’s all it takes.
You do not need to join an expensive health club or purchase fancy fitness machines. Push-ups still work. So do sit-ups (now more often referred to as crunches). Dumbbells are relatively inexpensive. What you need is the will to use them.
3. Flexibility: The final item to insure functional fitness is flexibility, the ability to move your joints. You need not be a yoga expert capable of wrapping one leg around the back of your neck. A minimal amount of flexibility and balance will do.
When exercise experts discuss flexibility with runners, the word used most often is “stretching.” It’s what they do to loosen their muscles before and after long runs. Most people who start running eventually develop a stretching routine: three or four quick stretches to incorporate in their workouts. Non-runners need to do the same.
But while stretching can promote flexibility, you do not want to stretch too much or too hard, at least not to the point of pain. If your goal only is functional fitness, stretch whenever the opportunity presents itself. Stretching should come natural. Watch a cat. Cats stretch whenever it suits them.
If you can blend the three elements of functional fitness—aerobics, strength and flexibility—you can have the last laugh at comedians making fun of your workout routines.
Hal Higdon is a Contributing Editor with Runner’s World and a consultant for TrainingPeaks. Visit his Web site at: www.halhigdon.com.
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