What does it mean to be fit?

We all have a mental image of what "fitness" looks like… 

For some, it's having six-pack abs. For others, it's the ability to run a mile or lift a challenging weight.

The truth is, "fitness" as a concept is about many factors including how you look, what physical capabilities you have, and how it feels to live in your body.

For me, as a functional nutrition coach and personal trainer, fitness is essentially intertwined with your strength and mobility, as well as the energy and motivation to do the activities that make your life worth living.

Maybe it would be helpful to talk about fitness in terms of what bodies should be able to do. Bodies were made to sit, stand, walk, skip, run, hop, jump, leap, twist, bend, crouch, turn, climb, crawl and any other verb you usually associate with kids playing.

In order to do these things, our joints were designed to move bones in different directions by the energetic activity of our muscles.

The stronger we are, the easier the body exerts the force required to move with control. The more mobile we are, the more fluid those movements will be. This is why strength and mobility are my two pillars for being truly fit.

When you take into account the need to maintain cardio health, strength, balance, and all the other components of a healthy body, it can be daunting to establish a well-rounded fitness routine.

Here are my tips for building a robust  practice that enables you the most functionality and ease of movement:

Start by prioritizing movement.  Your body's functionality works on a use or lose basis. Whatever you don't use will be determined unneeded and slowly phased out. A sedentary lifestyle can make muscles atrophy, joints stiffen, and nerves become less neuroplastic. This is true for big muscles used for gross movement as well as muscles that pump blood through your body, distribute oxygen to your cells, and shuttle food through your digestive system. Being active and moving regularly are required to do all of these critical jobs properly, so keeping your body active is necessary at the most basic level.

Work on building strength. What does strength training mean? Essentially, it's using a resistance to build muscles so they can bear weight or move a load.  Strength includes muscles working in concert to exert control at your peak range of motion. When training for strength, your resistance can come from

•  Your own body weight (as in pushups and pull-ups)

• Bands--which engage muscles in both the concentric (shortening) and eccentric (lengthening) phases of muscle movement

• Weights such as dumbbells, kettlebells, bars and plates

• Pulleys, and

• Other gym machines. 

Muscles like to be challenged, and challenges can come from incrementally increasing the load you put on them. Your body will push to accommodate the new requirement. It's imperative you rest after strength training so your muscles will properly recover and restructure as stronger tissue. It's necessary to both lift and then rest, if you want to get stronger in a healthy way.

Strength enables you to perform tasks need to live life. This is true for basic functional processes like carrying your baby to lugging groceries to running Olympic races. The stronger you are, the more your body will perform for you when you need it to, able to do the tasks you both need and want to do.

Dedicate time to improving mobility. Where your bones meet, you have a joint. Joints allow your bones to move in different directions. Muscles act on bones to enable this function. Each joint has a particular movement or set of movements that it's designed to perform. Your hips and shoulders are the most mobile. As ball and socket joints, they lift, lower, flex, extend, and rotate. These versatile joints go with you wherever your body goes, which is why in sports like basketball, defenders can look at shoulders and hips to predict where a player may go, even if their gaze and their torsos lean in another direction.

When each joint moves with ease in the direction(s) it's meant to go, your body can successfully use its strength to support a load, and you can move with fluidity and grace.

There are factors that limit joint mobility. The most common ones are stagnation (not using the joint to the point where it stops moving properly), injury, and fascial restriction (knots and adhesions in the soft, connective tissue). When your joints don't move properly, your alignment suffers, and you risk injury when use your body.

Unfortunately, as we age, it becomes commonplace to experience restricted movement. We overcompensate and accommodate restrictions with maladaptive movement patterns, and we eventually begin to feel the gnawing ache of irritation and pain.

Keeping your joints mobile is a critical step to aging gracefully and staying fit. A few good ways to do this:

• Get regular massages. Massage helps release soft tissues that have been bunched up and restricted.

• Try yoga. Yoga poses require your joints to get into positions that are rarely used in activities of daily living. Your joints will move in new directions, and your muscles will lengthen to enable deeper movement.

• Get myofascial release by hitting your soft tissues with a foam roller, trigger point balls, or a percussion massager

• Use breathwork as part of your warm-up or cool-down. Take 5 seconds on your inhale and 5 seconds on your exhale. Do 5 rounds. When you are breathing deeply from your belly, you're signaling to your nervous system that you're safe. Your nervous system will not clench up, but rather relax and allow your body to release.

Consider functional training. When your training is aligned with the movement demands of life, the payoff is real and tangible. Squat, lunge, push, and pull--the four basic functional movements are things you do repeatedly throughout the course of a day. Imagine lifting your toddler off of the floor, shoving a heavy box onto a high garage shelf, and pulling the cord of a lawn mower. These are all actions where you use your strength and mobility to get things done.

You can train your body to perform these functions more effectively by ensuring your strength training routine incorporates the four basic functional movements. The beauty of training this way is that you use dynamic movement, which engages multiple muscles, in different directions, and often on different planes. The end result is improved capability, visible in better performance as well as more ease and fluidity. You will notice it's easier to lift your toddler, lug your groceries, hike up a rocky trail, or whatever your barometer is.

The other benefit of functional training is that it never gets boring. There are so many different types of squats--front squat, goblet squat, sumo squat, pistol squat, TRX squat, wall ball squat, single-leg squat… you get the picture. Likewise, each of the 4 basic functional movements offer diverse options for performing them. You can train slightly different muscles, from different angles just by varying the move a smidge. In fact, the more diversity, the more joint mobility and the more you'll reap performance benefits.

In this day and age, we all know there are benefits to exercise. The real challenge seems to be how to get the activity we need to live with fluidity and grace, to do the things that make life joyful to us. In my experience, functional training with an emphasis on strength and mobility ensures I can do what I love--hike, kayak, walk my dog, garden--with no restrictions. This is how fitness is freedom.

So, if you haven't already, commit the time to a fitness routine each week. Walk as much as possible (or run, skip, frolic). Give yourself 2-3 days of strength training focused on functional moves. Include some yoga or soft-tissue manipulation to help your tissues stay mobile. Take it week by week. When things get hectic, try setting a daily minimum--maybe a 15-minute walk, or a 10-minute yoga routine in the morning. Be kind to yourself and stick with it. You'll soon realize you can't live without it. As always, share your experiences in the comments.

Not sure how to get started? Feel free to reach out for a free consultation. There's a way to get moving regardless of your age, budget, current fitness level, and injury status. All you need to do is begin.