4. Great Results at Home with Little or No Equipment
During the coronavirus pandemic, workout equipment flew off the shelves, with millions of people scrambling to put together a home gym because fitness centers were closing across the country. Equipment such as weights, exercise bikes, and rowers were out of stock for months. The good news is exercise can be just as effective without a gym or workout equipment. You can easily achieve the same results—or even better—exercising at home with little or no workout equipment using something called “functional training.”
Functional Training
Functional training mimics activities or specific skills you perform at home, at work, or in sports to help you thrive in your daily life. This kind of training is effective because it uses different muscles simultaneously and also emphasizes core stability — the control of muscles around the abdomen and back that protect your spine when you move. For example, performing squats with a chair trains the same muscles you use when you rise from a chair, pick up an object from the ground, climb stairs, or hike up a mountain.
Many fitness and rehabilitation experts, including myself, have known for a while that functional training is the most effective way to train. Finally, the research is catching up with our observations. Functional training has now been shown in multiple studies to produce results that are superior to most other forms of exercise
for diverse groups of people, including young military personnel, middle-aged females with low back pain, and (of course) older adults.
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One study demonstrated that high-intensity functional training was safe and effective for improving balance and independence in individuals aged 65 and older who had dementia and were living in nursing homes.
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Another showed that functional training significantly improved the golf swing and fitness level of golfers aged between 60 and 80 years old.
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By training your muscles to work functionally, you’ll prepare your body to perform well in a variety of tasks that are important to your daily life—and you can do it at home with the aid of “equipment” readily available, such as a backpack filled with canned goods, to increase the difficulty level of exercise. At most, the only exercise equipment you would need for this program is a pair of five-pound ankle weights you can easily find at Walmart or Amazon.
Exercising at Home
There are several additional benefits to exercising at home versus going to a gym:
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The ease and convenience of exercising at home removes demotivating barriers. You don’t have to drive to the gym, change your clothes in a room full of strangers, or wait for workout equipment to free up.
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The gym can be an intimidating place for some older adults. But self-consciousness or fear of what others may think is not
a concern with functional training at home.
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For older adults who don’t function well enough to leave home without assistance, going to the gym can be difficult or impossible. Exercising at home is the only way for these people to improve strength, balance, and function.
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The price tag of a gym membership can be an obstacle for many older adults on fixed incomes. Cost is not an issue with workouts at home that require little or no equipment.
Combination Approach
The real secret to this program is the integration of higher-intensity training (discussed in the last chapter) and functional training, adapted for older adults. You won’t find this combined approach to exercise for older adults in many other places, but it’s a method that will allow you to safely and quickly achieve great results at home with little or no equipment.
You may be wondering at this stage why you couldn’t just do something else that needs no equipment—such as walking—for exercise. It’s certainly true that walking is another form of functional training that doesn’t require equipment and can be good for your health, but in the next chapter I’ll explain why walking alone isn’t enough to reverse age-related muscle loss.
Key Takeaways
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You can easily achieve the same or even better results exercising at home with little or no workout equipment using “functional training.”
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Multiple studies have shown functional training to produce results that are superior to most other forms of exercise for diverse groups of people, including older adults.
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The real secret to this program is the integration of higher-intensity training with functional training adapted for older adults. It will allow you to safely and quickly achieve great results at home with little or no equipment.
Action Steps