Follow the Function - lifestyle fitness matters.

Fit incidental or lifestyle fitness into your day

A few years ago I wrote an article about what I called “incidental fitness” by which I meant doing exercises during the normal course of the day that would make you stronger, little by little (known by many as 'lifestyle fitness'.

I do this on top of normal training – swimming, biking or running – and it definitely helps because incidental fitness works a wider range of muscles.

Say you are walking up a flight of stairs, you use them to get fitter. For instance, pause for a few seconds to do half a dozen calf raises that strengthen your Achilles and lower leg and give your gait a more natural bounce. Or engage your middle, take a deep breath and take two of the steps at once. Or plant your foot firmly on a step and roll slowly over it.

And make sure to take your hands off the bannister.

It was an old friend of mine, a weight-trainer his entire life and a marathon runner, who got me thinking about incidental fitness. At his local church he noticed how the mainly elderly congregation hauled themselves to their feet for the hymn by grabbing the back of the pew. Realising he could help, he started a movement called Born Again Bodies that ran well-attended exercise classes.  

As countless studies show, older people grow much weaker than they have to, mainly through neglect. 

Prodded by my friend, I now make sure to get up from a chair without using my hands, walk on my toes and heels several times a day (a whole new set of muscles comes into play), never haul myself up the stairs by the bannister, and do a few calf raises on the way up the stairs. Almost without knowing it, you are getting stronger.

That’s what I called incidental fitness but it’s now named functional fitness. As the livestrong.com site wrote in January 2024, functional fitness is exactly what it says on the tin:

“Movements like climbing stairs, carting a trash can out to the curb and squatting down to load the washing machine may seem like second nature. But as you age, grow more sedentary or change your lifestyle, those seemingly simplistic tasks can feel as difficult as scaling a mountain or pushing an Olympic bobsled.”

That may be an exaggeration but the point is those daily operations become more difficult and risky if you neglect the muscles that they require.

Livestrong continues: “Simply put, functional fitness is a type of training that preps your body for the movements you perform in your everyday life. In a functional workout you might practice movement patterns such as squatting, hinging, pulling, pushing and carrying — which translate to real-life actions like standing up from a chair, bending over and picking up your cat, pushing your kid's stroller down the street and lugging heavy grocery bags to your car.

"Functional training really refers to doing exercises to help you make everyday life easier or everyday activities stronger," explains a fitness trainer. "So for a someone who wants to be able to pick up their grandchild, functional training would be squatting with a biceps curl, for instance."

In my view these exercises can be done in two ways: in one session of, say, a quarter hour or intermittently during the day for anything between one and five minutes at a time.

Either way, it’s useful to draw up a list of perhaps a dozen different exercises, stick it on the fridge and work your way down the list every other day. YouTube can, of course, also help but make sure it's aimed at someone with your currently ability.

Start easily, well within your range, and gradually increase the number of reps week by week.

The results will amaze you.