Training for Life

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 preaching this gospel as an umbrella approach to exercise. “It’s a larger, more holistic approach. You’re looking at where the body is breaking down,’’ says Todd Durkin, owner of an exercise facility in San Diego.

‘‘We’ve become professional sitters and almost forgotten how to bend or squat,’’ says Mumbai-based fitness expert Leena Mogre. She says executives and housewives alike are lining up to try it out.

This broadening interest explains the profusion of yoga and Pilates classes. Suddenly old-fashioned push-ups and squat thrusts are in vogue. All of these use the body’s own weight as resistance and demand core strength.

Kaizzad Capadia, founder of the K11 Fitness Academy, has introduced functional fitness training at one of his facilities—Endurance, in Pune. ‘‘When 35-year-olds find it difficult to do everyday activities, core training is required,’’ he says. So instead of leg extensions that work only one muscle, Capadia recommends squats, which bring three muscles into play. ‘‘A squat mimics a movement similar to getting out of a chair. Extensions aren’t going to do that,’’ Capadia says.

Gina Miranda discovered functional fitness after repeatedly picking up her 9 pound infant daughter. ‘‘A couple of times I pulled my back,’’ 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 and ran agility ladders like a football player—all components of functional fitness. A few months later, she says, ‘‘the strain was gone. As she got heavier and heavier, I was stronger and stronger.’’

The equipment inventory includes free weights, medicine balls, stability balls and cable weight machines, all of which work multiple muscle groups simultaneously.

Doing a bicep curl with a dumb-bell while sitting on a stability ball engages core muscles that help the body stabilise. Doing a bicep curl on a fixed weight machine just isolates the biceps.

We almost never isolate muscles 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 not only use your biceps, but also bend your knees and use your back.”

Equally important is to counter what we overdo—sitting at a computer or bending over to pick things up.

The price of ignoring functional fitness? Aches, pains and worse. A degenerative disc disease prompted Cindy Swikard’s doctor to suggest back surgery. The executive from San Diego rejected that. Instead she developed a workout with a trainer that includes core exercises. That has decreased her pain and allowed her to run, ski, hike and cycle again. ‘‘I can do normal stuff like sitting down, going up and down stairs. I don’t ever get that tiredness or backache,’’ says Swikard, 47.

Typical weight-lifting routines can put people in a rut, says Durkin. ‘‘When you sit on a bench and lift weights, you’re shutting down your neuromuscular education. You need to fire it up and do dynamic training, stand on your feet and move.’’

That simple change will take your training to a higher level. Plyometrics will improve explosive power and fast-twitch muscles (used for sprinting and jumping). Doing sit-ups and push-ups on unstable props like stability balls will increase core strength and balance.

Bollywood trainer Satyajit Chourasia’s got Rani Mukerji and Esha Deol on to strength training. ‘‘There’s one lower body exercise that works wonders,’’ he says. It involves a Swiss ball and some special positions for the feet. ‘‘It’s a complete lower body workout in just 10 minutes,’’ he says.