I talk a lot about training for sports here. And while sports is a fun part of a lot of people’s lives, I think sometimes people think that training is only for the sports enthusiast. They forget that we are all involved in the sport of life and that life takes a toll on us in more ways than our sport ever could. For example, I am a runner. I enjoy marathons, completing them, training for them, hearing about them. But the reality is that marathon running is an optional part of my life. I do it for enjoyment.
I first started running seriously when I was in the Marine Corps. Running in the Marines was for survival, not the thrill of finishing a race. And regardless of what you do at home or in your career, you have things that you could do better (sometimes MUCH better) if you were in better shape for them. A perfect example of this is mothers with small children. When you start out balancing a small baby in your arms, you are only holding 8-10 pounds at it does not seem that difficult. As they get bigger, you find your back hurting and them taking a physical toll on you. It does not have to be that way. There are ways to train, called functional fitness, that take into account what you do every day.
Do you lift children and packages in and out of your car? Do you sit at a desk (or in your vehicle or on a plane) for large periods of time? Do you have to stand for long periods of time? Are you a caregiver (to an adult or child) who must lift someone regularly or in an emergency?
I realize these are not glamorous and they certainly are not sports, but the functional training concepts people use for sport training can help you do all of these things better. One of the concepts of functional training is to lift weights in a method that emulates the movement you are trying to perfect. So for a baseball player this may be cable crossovers to emulate the motion of swinging a bat. Well this twisting weighted movement also works well for anyone because we all lift things out of our cars and twist with them.
You know when you hear about someone bending over and not being able to get back up because they have hurt their back so badly. Or someone’s knee just “giving out” and they fall and are injured. These are not freak accidents. They are signs from your body that you have been doing damage for a while and it finally has to let you down because it just cannot take the abuse anymore. Functional training allows you to stop abusing your body and allows you to do these things without the worry that you are going to injure yourself.