As a young person, it is easy to write off functional independence as something that Old people need. Yet by “young person” I mean anyone who is still functionally independent! Do you need help doing basic physical tasks? My friend Justin, just had significant shoulder surgery and wears his arm in an elaborate sling. Justin is not currently functionally independent. It’s also easy to write off the importance of functional independence because at face value it is personal especially when you have it. “I can take care of myself or pay for my own help.” Once it’s gone or compromised though, it is intensely communal. Your family loves you, and they’ll take care of you or pay someone to take care of you. The assisted living industry is a whopping $400 billion dollar industry and growing— trending to $700 billion by 2026. Paying someone to wipe your butt is expensive, shouldn’t it be? If your job was wiping butts, you’d want to be compensated handsomely I’m sure.

“My exercise is yard work!” “I’m pretty active, I go on walks and bike rides and hikes.” “Golf is my exercise, that’s good enough.” Leisurely activity is awesome. Yes it does play a role in wellness, but no, it does not prepare us for the tasks required to be functionally independent later in life (or even sooner unfortunately if trends in obesity and diabetes continue to skyrocket). Justin goes on walks and can hike— he’s not functionally independent. The problem lies in the physical truth of what life asks of us vs what we perceive as sufficient preparation for those tasks. Taking a long walk can do wonders for your stress level and a round of golf is certainly fun, but they look nothing like getting off and on the toilet. Your kids don’t put you in the home when you quit golfing or going on walks, they put you in the home when someone needs to help you out of bed in the morning and put you back at night. I have a great passion for riding my bike, and I’d prefer to do it every single day, but it’s not a squat, dead lift, or press which will allow me to live independently and no amount of bike riding will prepare me to do those things. Actually the opposite is true— functional movements make the leisurely activity much easier and arguably much more enjoyable. A round of golf shouldn’t leave you crippled for a couple of days and if you love hiking, no peak should be off limits. Recreational sports, yard work, playing with your kids etc. are the spice of life and the goal should be to do them until you die. It’s a glaring misconception that those things alone are sufficient to continue them because as we age, inevitably your capacity for them dwindles. Functional capacity is built in your youth (youth as in anyone who is currently functionally independent. could be 7 or 70). Functional capacity can certainly be built or re-gained in later years, but really in our later years, we should be capable and strong enough to maintain that independence. As much as we are loved by our families and friends and they want to take care of us, we love them equally and shouldn’t be complaisant in burdening them with our physical needs.

“I’m already skinny, I don’t need to exercise to be healthy.” Heard that too! Plenty of skinny people in the old folks home though. Leisurely activity also does little for our structural health (bone and muscle). Obesity greatly accelerates the loss of functional independence, but that’s not simply because of excess fat and its related health complications. It just has to do with your relative strength. Being light matters little in terms of independence because it’s not your weight that sends you to the home. Of all the reasons someone needs assisted living, Alzheimer’s, dementia, diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, MS, Parkinson’s etc., the common thread is purely physical. Assistance in the basic acts of living, specifically the inability to produce force with the legs (getting off and on the toilet or in and out of the bath) is the common thread in each of those ailments. It’s 2019, and though life expectancy in America has gone down the past 3 years, there’s enough drugs and medical interventions to keep you alive for a long time. The tragedy isn’t dying at 90, the tragedy is sitting on a couch, eating soft food for the last 25 years of your life. That could be 25 years of awesome living if we maintain our functional independence!

If you’re convinced and agree that it’s a good time to start getting fitter, do some homework. If you join a gym, a good gym, they’ll teach you how to squat, dead-lift, and press. If you’re not the gym type, learn how to squat, dead-lift, and press. Don’t over complicate it. Any youtube fitness guru will do, even though they’ll all claim that they’re teaching the one and only correct technique. The type of squat isn’t important so long as they increase your leg strength, core stability, balance and flexibility. Any dead-lift will do, so long as it increases your leg and back strength, core stability, balance and flexibility. The same is true for the press so long as it increases your arm and shoulder strength, core stability, balance and flexibility. Practice them often! Heavy, light, fast, slow, many, few. Just don’t think that cruising on an elliptical machine for a whole episode of Rachael Ray is what will keep you functionally independent at 90+!