Getting Fit with Jack Walton

May 24 2008 The Journal

Health and Fitness by Functional Design

MANY of us are in pursuit of enhancing our health and performance levels. The toughest challenge is deciding what is going to be the best approach to take. Which approach will finally fix that painful joint, digestive complaint or improve your fitness and sport performance? During the last five years of working with clients presenting with varied requirements, this has been a common question and challenge.

Function: Design and Desire

When it comes to exercise, health and fitness, ‘function’ has various definitions. It can be something you were designed to do, yet we should also consider what function we actually desire. If we have a desk-job, we should base elements of our training on this. If we play a sport, the training programme should be specific to those demands.

The questions we face: How has the human body evolved to function? What were we designed to do? If we know the answers, we can think about the best ways to enhance our abilities to perform such demands. The following is a basic outline of demands the human body is designed to face.

1. Fight or Flight, survival in the form of hunting and avoiding harm.

2. Eating is an activity that we should all attribute time and enjoyment to.

3. Building and constructing, for shelter, recreation and engineering.

4. Travelling, getting from A to B is important for survival to exist in suitable environments.

5. Communication, including interaction with others and recreational activities.

6. Desired activities that makes you, you.

7. Rest and Relaxation, needed daily to perform the above factors.

Putting it All Together

So what do we make of this? While society has changed to some degree, there are many commonalities in the above points. For example, while we may not need to construct our shelter manually anymore, we still need some stimulus to use our bodies in similar ways to develop our movement, strength, endurance and overall health. Relate the points to yourself. These are the demands your body is designed to face and is expecting.

So keep it simple; consider what you need to have a fulfilling life and address this in your training for health and performance.

Functional Trainer provides Exercise Coaching for Health and Performance, 07792 761324, or jackwwalton@hotmail.com