Maintaining Functional Fitness

Maintaining Functional Fitness

Author: Stormy Fanning, RN, MSN

            When you got up this morning, you probably did not give a second thought to getting out of bed, sitting down at the breakfast table, standing up again, and walking outside and down the front steps to get the paper. These tasks are all part of ‘functional fitness’ or ‘functional mobility.’ If the term ‘fitness’ makes you picture people in tracksuits and bright white sneakers strolling jauntily down a walking path, well- this isn’t that kind of fitness.

            Functional fitness is the movements we must do every day to complete our daily tasks. We take them for granted for the first seven or eight decades of our lives because they require little effort to do. There are so many new devices that make our lives easier and shorten the time and effort on our daily tasks. We no longer have to spend an hour in the kitchen cooking a meal. We don’t have to dig up the flower garden with a shovel and hoe. Most of our daily life is automated and without manual labor.

            The downside to these advances is that when we don’t use those functional moves frequently, we lose the ability to do them when needed. And it isn’t until we are abruptly faced with that inability that we even realize it has happened.

            Let’s take the example of Leann. Leann was 74 years old and had gained some weight over the years. As it became more difficult for her to get out of the chair, her family bought her a recliner that would stand her up partway, making it easier to stand. She used this daily for a year but then had to be hospitalized for a kidney problem. When Leann was trying to get up from the bed to go to the bathroom, she realized that she was no longer strong enough to move from a sitting to a standing position on her own power.

            Another example is Bill. Bill was 68 years old and he still got up and around at home. He was carrying some extra weight around his middle, and it could be a bit of a struggle to get out of his chair. He adapted to this by rocking back and forth to get a little momentum and then using his arms to push off the chair as he stood up. This worked out just fine until Bill had to have shoulder surgery. Now, he couldn’t use his arms, and he didn’t have the strength to stand using just his legs.

            Then there is Jim. Jim could get up and down from the chair just fine. He had some lung problems and had to wear oxygen, so he didn’t go out of the house too often. He didn’t have trouble walking around in the house, and he was tall and thin, so he didn’t have much weight to move around. Jim got pneumonia and was in the hospital for a week. While he was there, he sat up in the chair in his room and even walked in the hallway a few times. Everything seemed to be just fine until he was discharged home. When they arrived at his house, he realized that he could not walk up the four stairs that went into the front of the house. The muscles to go up a step were different than the muscles to walk on flat ground, and he had lost that strength.

            The names are not real, but these were very real patients I cared for in the hospital. All three of them had to go to a short-term rehab facility to regain the functional fitness needed to return home. As we age, it is everyone’s hope to stay in their home as long as possible. One key to that is to maintain functional fitness. It is much easier to maintain it than to lose it and have to work to regain it.

            Fortunately, it is easy to maintain functional fitness. No personal trainer or spandex is required! Simply make yourself do all the movements, every day, without allowing any conveniences to make the job easier. Practice standing up without using your arms. Go up and down the stairs once a day. Reach down to the bottom shelf, even if you don’t need anything off it right now. Reach down to tie your shoes instead of always wearing slip-ons.

            Our modern lives have many conveniences- microwaves, automatic doors, elevators, delivery of every imaginable item right to our front door. It is very easy to let our functional fitness fall prey to these conveniences but with a little awareness and effort, we can keep moving and stay independent.

Published November 2023, Buffalo Breeze, Buffalo WY


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