Getting fit with Elite 400

However, I will paint a slightly different picture for you.

Fitness itself means many things to many people but, for the purpose of this article, we will say that our fitness level is relevant to how it either positively or negatively affects our ability to carry out the functions of our daily existence.

We will also assume for the time being that very few of us are professional athletes. If that is true, then it becomes understood that we need to accomplish several different types of tasks throughout the day, very few of which involve isolating one muscle group from another.

This concept is more readily applied to the population on a large scale. Most of us at sometime will have to carry babies, chase kids, do laundry, shop, clean house, move furniture and accomplish various other task.

Office workers …oh, that’s right, they pick up those five-gallon bottles of water for the water dispenser. We all fall somewhere on the spectrum.

Considering all the facts, does it then make sense to spend our limited training time frolicking around the gym on inflatable balls like a circus performer?

How about the more commonplace biceps curl - where does that fit in? While there is a place for gym training, I would say that for the overwhelming majority of us, we would be better served by moving our bodies in space, picking things up, throwing things and developing skills like balance in the types of patterns that we use during the course of our day.

Regardless of what we call our pursuit of fitness (I utilize a program called CrossFit, which can be further investigated here: www.elite400.co.uk), we want it to develop our fitness capacity in a way that makes our daily lives easier.

The movements that we use in the gym (or out of it, if you tend toward long-distance style workouts) should exist outside of the gym, and the equipment that we use should allow us to properly mimic the movements that we use outside of the gym. These are functional movements, and this is the essence of functional fitness.