Time to Get in Shape! Maximizing Work Capacity: Functional Fitness for Everyday Life - Ep 282
Apr 14, 2024
Rock Solid Families
Are you fit enough to do every day life? We often hear about building muscle and scuptling the perfect body, but the truth is, many of us don't have the time or interest to build the perfect body, we just want to be active and healthy.
In today's show Merrill discusses the concept of building Work Capacity. Work Capacity is our abiltiy to do work. Nothing fancy. Work by definition is Force x Distance. That means you apply a certain amount of force in order to move an object. Work Capacity is simply, how much or even how long you can carry the workload out.
Going to the gym to build bigger muscles does not necessarily equate to helping you be more functional in your daily life. Doing heavy reps and then walking around and resting in between sets does little to enhance our ability to sustain an activity in daily living. Cutting the grass or running a chainsaw requires us to start the job and continue it until it's finished. This means we have sustained work over a period of time.
In order to become more functionally fit, it is important to incorporate movements and tasks that closely replicate daily living. Bending over to pick up a heavy bag of groceries, climbing a flight of stairs, loading and unloading a truckload of mulch, these are the types of patterns and loads we want to incorporate into our workouts. On top of this, we want to place a goal of sustaining the pattern over time. This constant movement requires the most vital organ of our body to work and strengthen, our heart.
Linda and Merrill specifically use a piece of fitness equipement that Merrill invented called the Kettle Bar. He invented it because he sees building overall fitness and work capacity as the primary desire of his workouts and the clients he works with. The truth is, not many people truly walk into the gym desiring to be a bikini model or Mr. Universe. Most just want to be strong and fit enough to play a pickup game of pickleball or split a load of firewood without getting injured.
Are you fit enough to do every day life? We often hear about building muscle and scuptling the perfect body, but the truth is, many of us don't have the time or interest to build the perfect body, we just want to be active and healthy.
In today's show Merrill discusses the concept of building Work Capacity. Work Capacity is our abiltiy to do work. Nothing fancy. Work by definition is Force x Distance. That means you apply a certain amount of force in order to move an object. Work Capacity is simply, how much or even how long you can carry the workload out.
Going to the gym to build bigger muscles does not necessarily equate to helping you be more functional in your daily life. Doing heavy reps and then walking around and resting in between sets does little to enhance our ability to sustain an activity in daily living. Cutting the grass or running a chainsaw requires us to start the job and continue it until it's finished. This means we have sustained work over a period of time.
In order to become more functionally fit, it is important to incorporate movements and tasks that closely replicate daily living. Bending over to pick up a heavy bag of groceries, climbing a flight of stairs, loading and unloading a truckload of mulch, these are the types of patterns and loads we want to incorporate into our workouts. On top of this, we want to place a goal of sustaining the pattern over time. This constant movement requires the most vital organ of our body to work and strengthen, our heart.
Linda and Merrill specifically use a piece of fitness equipement that Merrill invented called the Kettle Bar. He invented it because he sees building overall fitness and work capacity as the primary desire of his workouts and the clients he works with. The truth is, not many people truly walk into the gym desiring to be a bikini model or Mr. Universe. Most just want to be strong and fit enough to play a pickup game of pickleball or split a load of firewood without getting injured.
rock solid families would like to thank hoosier ice house for being a proud sponsor of the rock solid families podcast. In the heart of historic lawrenceburg, indiana, the ice house is at the corner of vine and high streets. The historic building evokes a feeling of comfort, with spacious indoor and outdoor dining, a large, large bar and comfortable dining areas. Large enough to host parties, yet intimate enough to feel like your favorite neighborhood restaurant. So thank you again for the Hoosier Ice House for sponsoring the Rock Solid Families Podcast. Welcome to the Rock solid families podcast. I am linda hutchinson here with merle. Why do you have a sweat towel already? We are going to work out today.
Speaker 2:
Oh no, it's been a while since we've worked out.
Speaker 1:
We're in your domain, aren't we in our gym, in the gym today?
Speaker 2:
yeah, yeah, yeah, it's been a bit of a while here, since we've done a good business show.
Speaker 1:
And some people don't even know we have a gym in our office. So yeah, so welcome to the Rock Solid Family's gym.
Speaker 2:
It's a little echoey in here, but yeah, that's what gyms do Briefly, and we'll get our sponsors and all that. But briefly, the reason why we're doing this, guys, is, as we're recording, this spring is there. People are out cutting grass, people are out working in the yard and, believe it or not, people are getting hurt. People are having heart attacks.
Speaker 2:
I know, I don't want to be a doomsday guy oh no and a lot of that has to do with the idea that over the course of the winter there was a whole lot of city. Probably most of us could look at the mirror and say, yeah, I got a little chunky moshies on the middle there, okay. And so what we're going to talk about today is going to be a little bit different than maybe some of your standard. Go in and lift some weights or get on some machines, that kind of thing. So we're going to talk about that. But how about we thank our sponsors?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, we definitely want to thank our sponsors. We want to thank Casey's Outdoor Solutions, maxwell Construction and the Hoosier Ice House for really walking alongside Rock Solid Families and the podcast and really supporting what we do in the office and out of the office. And so, yeah, we just want to thank them and if you know those folks at those locations, please let them know how much you appreciate their support.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, all right, very good, all right. So the word or the phrase that we're going to use today, han is something we call work capacity, building work capacity. So in the world of the exercise, the gym, you'll hear things like cardio, resistance training, strength building Our son would say bulking.
Speaker 1:
Bulking yes.
Speaker 2:
Okay, powerlifting, you'll hear all these kinds of things and those, those all are great and they all have their place. So we're not trying to say one's better than the other or anything like that, because it really depends on what you want to do, what's your end goal. And you know the majority of people that come in our gym, hun, they just want to do life. Yeah, they just want to be healthy. Yeah, they just want to be healthy. Yeah, they want to be able to go out and play a pickup pickleball game or go work out in the yard or go run around with the kids.
Speaker 1:
Okay.
Speaker 2:
Maybe they're going to go to the park and they're going to go for a four mile hike, you know. And so that kind of conditioning is very different than, maybe, if I'm going to do bodybuilding yeah, right and so or if I'm going to do bodybuilding.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, right, and so, or marathon running. Our daughter's training for a half marathon right now. Hers is very different, her training is different.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, not good, bad, nothing. It's just different. And so what we're going to talk about is how do we get ourself better at being prepared to just do the daily life's work, and that's the work capacity, okay. So in order to do that, we really want to look at a lot of different things. I want to look at what you guys have probably heard about, like functional movements. You mentioned what are some of your daily moves that you do?
Speaker 1:
around our house, yeah, whether it be picking up the laundry, whether it be pulling weeds, whether it be mopping the floor, you know whether it be running the sweeper, like just a lot of twisting, turning, lifting, moving.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and so you know this is the functional part, and you know, believe it or not, like there's a lot of stuff out there that claims to be functional and it just really isn't. I mean, you still have people lifting extremely heavy weight. You know we're going to do dead, just functional lifting, but to be real honest, not many people lift, you know, 80 percent of their one rep max for daily living, right? So what we're going to do is we're going to put a combination of different kinds of exercises together and so for, for what we're going to do today and, by the way, we'll give you some different ideas for what you can do, depending on what equipment you have.
Speaker 2:
We're going to do a little bit of lifting, all right, we're going to do a little bit of lifting, right. We're going to do a little bit of squatting, a little bit of a rotation movement or resisting movement, so that we don't hurt our back when we go to lift the gallon of milk up off the side of the table. Okay, we're going to do some lateral shuffle move back and forth. Okay, we're going to do some pulling, and so when we pull, we have to use the side, so often when we're in the gym and this is probably more of a male issue. We want to do the front side. We want to do all the push-ups. We have bench press not that they're bad, but we sort of just leave the the pool. Yeah, it's just sort of forgotten. So we're going to make sure we have a good combination of all of those things. Now, specifically, we have a name for this particular workout here at Rock Summit.
Speaker 1:
We do we do.
Speaker 2:
It might've been invented by somebody sitting here on this table. Well, we're going to use our piece of equipment called the kettle bar and, in particular, we actually have a competition. We have a couple of competitions, but one of our competitions is the KB Blitz, the Kettlebar Blitz, and it was really designed off of this idea. How can I get a lot of different functional movement? And basically we have what you're going to see. We're going to walk through this and you're going to see, like, our competition is how many rounds can you complete in 30 minutes? Or you can do like a set number of rounds and you time yourself. So it depends on how you set it.
Speaker 1:
Wow 30 minutes to do what we're going to be doing. I would be dead. So I'm glad we're not doing 30 minutes. We're not going to do 30 minutes. You're sweating, thinking about it.
Speaker 2:
Well, I worked out before I even started, so it's hard for me to cool down. So, anyway, what we want you to see when you watch this is the variety in the movements. I also want you to notice the weight that we're using. So, when we're trying to do this kind of stuff to build work capacity, really we're honestly looking to do somewhere around 30 to 40% of what we might consider. Uh, like, we just use 30% of our body weight, okay, and the reason is because we're going to be using it in so many different planes of motion, so I don't want to like see how much I can deadlift and then use that also for an arm press, okay, so we're going to just use that same weight and we're going to use it in a variety of ways, yeah.
Speaker 1:
So if somebody doesn't have a kettle bar at home, what are some things that people can do to help with functional movement? Yeah, build work capacity.
Speaker 2:
So guys, you really you don't have to have any equipment.
Speaker 1:
Okay, you can.
Speaker 2:
You can actually do a lot of this with just body weight type things, where we would set up, uh combinations of push-ups, um of of body weight, squats, of lunges or walking lunges. Okay, um, we would do planking. You've done planks before, even sit-ups, so we could do a lot of different varieties. If I throw in just a little bit like a trx, uh set of trx bands, now I can get my pulls or my rows. I can get also rotational work done with the trx. So, yeah, you don't need a lot of equipment.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I mean, we have a little two two-step stool here and we do a lot of step ups and step downs. We do, uh, farmer carries where we're just carrying you don't even have. You can have a bucket of rocks or, you know, water, yeah, yeah so don't make it complicated.
Speaker 2:
In fact, people ask all the time man, I, I want to start getting in shape. You know what gym should I join?
Speaker 1:
yeah, and what equipment should I?
Speaker 2:
buy? Yeah, and it's like you know um. None gym should I join? Yeah, and what equipment should I buy? Yeah, and it's like you know um none of that's bad.
Speaker 2:
You can see, we have equipment, and I'm an equipment fan, for sure but at the end of the day, don't let the lack of equipment or the space, the absence of the space, to be the thing that stops you. Yeah, because just with, with very little creativity, you can put together just a little circuit and you run through that circuit. And so I would also, and I recommend, um, that you put on a heart rate monitor. Okay, uh, there's lots of different ways you can measure your output, but heart rate is just a very common and easy one, just so that you get an idea.
Speaker 2:
Well, how hard am I? Yeah, yeah, you're going to see, like, when we do our circuit, some of the circuit is relatively easy on the heart and some of it is much more demanding. Get you winded, yeah, so through the course of the circuit, we got our heart rate going up and down, and that's the key, like I want to get that heart rate up to a high level, right, and then it has to recover for the next piece of work that we're going to do, so making the heart rate go higher than we might normally do it and then trying to bring it back down.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, we've. We've got a group of retirees that come into our gym three or four days a week and, man, they're just moving, they're moving and they're combining it with walking, like that's another one of their favorite things to do outside, and and those two things are a great combo just to keep us active and healthy and strong and and really keep us from injury. Yep.
Speaker 2:
I mean, I'll give a plug to the, to the walking. I was always a runner and got very frustrated when I couldn't run.
Speaker 1:
And.
Speaker 2:
I was a bit stubborn with the idea of walking. Yes you were I don't want to walk, you didn't want to be my walking partner and uh, I have a doctor, uh, who actually replaced my right knee. He said, really, I recommend four to five days a week of at least 30 minutes a day on a walk, and the reason for that is walking keeps our feet in touch with the ground keeps our feet strong.
Speaker 2:
It keeps the hips heavy. Walking is actually a rotation function, and so it keeps the rotation going and, of course, it burns some calories and you can get the heart rate up a little bit.
Speaker 1:
But you're mimicking the things you're doing every day and, like you just said, what am I doing during the week? Well, we are going to be doing exercises here that are mimicking what we do every day, whether it be leaning over, whether it be squatting or bending or lifting, and so that's what we want to mimic and and hopefully strengthen in our workout yeah, yeah, all right, let's move this table.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, let's go to work, and then, as soon as we're done, we'll get back and we'll say, okay, how was that? Okay, all right. So stay tuned, we're going to jump right back in here with the kettle bar and the kb blitz circuit. Here we go, all right. So we are going to now start on our little workout to demonstrate work capacity. How do we build work capacity?
Speaker 2:
Ok, and so we're going to use the kettle bar. You don't have to use the kettle bar. So, as we talked about before, you can use other exercises and we'll show that. But we're just going to do a demonstration. We're going to do two basic rounds and we'll walk through those. We'll do them more slowly, just so that you guys can see what we're doing, some of the different dynamics, whether we're lifting something or squatting or lunging. So we'll just do some combinations of that, all right? And so let's get ready to roll. So, first things first with the kettle bar, right now it's in its resting phase, right, the weight's down at the bottom, which isn't that pretty cool. That is cool, you know, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:
Man, that inventor, knew what he was doing. He knew what he was doing, all right.
Speaker 2:
So the first thing we do is we just drop it completely over, all right. And the base plate is already on there, and so we're just going to pull that off. Okay, we're going to pull pins. Now, linda has two pins. I just have one. Mine is a fixed height, all right, so I'm just going to pull the pin. Linda will pull both of her pins, all right. And the first thing she's going to do is she's going to pull the base out so she can adjust her height. So, pull that out just a little bit. There you go.
Speaker 2:
And now what we're gonna do is we're gonna slide the pole all the way through so that the weight tree is at the very top. So it's at the top, and we'll put our top pin in. Okay, you got yours, and for your height, hun, we will set it up. So about two and a half holes are showing, okay, yeah, there you go. So we'll put that in. I just put my second pin in there. Put the second pin in, all right, I'll start a timer. You can either count your reps, but we're just going to set a timer for the sake of keeping ourselves consistent and walking through this. Okay, so we have a little countdown timer, I'll just get it rolling here.
Speaker 1:
Which now you can use your phone. Nowadays you can use your phone.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah, all right. So let's lift up the kettle bar and we're gonna put the ball into the socket with the kettle bar. Well, typically we like to use it right around chest height, okay, so this is assuming that you've already done a little bit of a warm-up. You've got your heart rate moving a little bit. A little bit of a warm-up. You've got your heart rate moving a little bit, a little bit of stretching. I've done that all day today, all right. And so we're going to start and we're going to mix up a variety of different moves. So we're going to be doing some side to side moves. We're going to be doing some some rows, some presses. We're going to actually work the core with what we call our arcs. We're going to do that and then, hon, we are going to do you ready for this. We're going to do some lat lay downs, all right, and we're going to do some frog throws, okay, they're my favorite from the seal community.
Speaker 2:
The frog throws okay, all right. So, first thing, half moons. Okay, here we go, and let's go to our left, like so and back. So, good, good, we're gonna go to the bell.
Speaker 1:
I feel like we're dancing.
Speaker 2:
Here we are. We want to stay on our toes when we're doing this. Just to work out the arch of the foot got my shoulders back. Okay, now we're gonna come up, we're gonna be about a foot behind the base plate and we're gonna lock our arms and we're gonna throw this side to side and you guys can't see this, but this is really stressing out the core.
Speaker 1:
Yes, it is All right, and you don't have I don't have as near as much weight that you do.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's all right. You, we have. About 30 percent of our body weight is a good workout weight, all right, good, okay, now we're going to do a press, so I'm going to get down on my right knee, okay. I have to think about that for a second.
Speaker 1:
All right.
Speaker 2:
And now I'm just going to press back and forth, I'm going to work my presses and we're rotating our shoulders.
Speaker 1:
Am I better at this than Kyle was?
Speaker 2:
Much better, much better, much better.
Speaker 1:
Your strong dad co-host was doing a lot of whining, yeah, but I put him through the paces.
Speaker 2:
Okay, we're just going to switch out our knees. No, we got to do the left side. All right, that's right.
Speaker 2:
I don't want to be lopsided, all right, and so I'm just rotating the shoulders, because when I rotate the shoulders, I'm also working the core of the body to get that rotation in. Oh yeah, good, alright, at the bell, we're gonna be standing back up and, rather than doing a press, we're gonna do a row. So we're gonna get up, we're gonna get on our left side and we're gonna do a row. So we're gonna get up, we're gonna get on our left side and we're gonna get out in front. We're just gonna start rowing, pulling that up, nice flat back. If I want it harder, I could go out a little bit farther, but just for the sake of demonstrating this, we're getting a nice shoulder row.
Speaker 1:
I can't tell you how many times I'm thankful for these exercises, when I'm trying to move furniture, or yeah the floor or let's go to the other side and now let's row the left, all right, so so, alright.
Speaker 2:
So so far these have been somewhat moderate, but our last two are not going to be so moderate. We're doing that for a reason Alright, we want to kick up our heart rate a little bit. We're not going to do it too hard right here in our demonstration. So this is a lat lay down, and so we're going to shuffle off to the left and I'm going to take my weight and I'm lunging down, touch the weight to the ground. Now I'm going to shuffle off to the right. Alright, so those were our lat and a down.
Speaker 2:
Last one here is our frog throw. We're going to go down into a squat and as we bring it up, we're going to throw and hop, and then we're going to throw and hop and we're going to hop back, and so this gets our explosive work also while we're lifting. So it's more of like a plyometric when you're doing that hop. All right, now we're gonna do that again. So let's go right into half moons. We're going to do two rounds, you starting to breathe hard. Yes, sir, dr, starting to breathe a little bit. All right, let's come up. We're going to lock our arms out. We're about a foot behind the base and we're going to start throwing the arc. I want to resist any twisting, so my shoulders and my hips are aligned. This is how I protect the spine.
Speaker 1:
So what do you call this? This is a straight on park. Now I'm talking about this whole sequence. It's called the taping blitz. Kevin Bart blitz.
Speaker 2:
Alright, we're now running to our press, so we get back up on the right knee.
Speaker 1:
I feel my work capacity growing already. I'm not. I'm being serious, I wasn't going to complain.
Speaker 2:
I wasn't going to complain.
Speaker 1:
You didn't offer me a stool, you got good help.
Speaker 2:
All right, we're going to jump up and go into the row, get on the left side and get a slight bend in my upper torso. So I'm not bending my back, I'm bending at the hip. I can do more, so of that, you can get down deeper in the legs if I wanted. Are my knees bent?
Speaker 1:
Just slight, just slight. How do I keep?
Speaker 2:
it from hitting my leg. Put your legs in a little closer, okay. You just get your legs too wide on it, okay, put your legs in together.
Speaker 1:
Oh gotcha, there you go. My stance was too wide. There's lots of different ways you can do rows.
Speaker 2:
We could have done them on the side like this, which would really alleviate that problem. Ok, so lots of different ways to do that. All right, from here we're going to go into our flat lay downs. Here we go Shuffle off to your left, shuffle off to your left Set down, jump off to the right Set down. I really want to get under the leg here. I'm going to lie on the water. I first extend the leg and then I pull away.
Speaker 1:
It's my favorite. I can't hop back. I'm going to show you the adjusted spike. Alright, let's do it now. Let's pull the pin while we're at it. In your case, you'll pull both of the pins.
Speaker 2:
There we go, put the ball in there. There we go, put the ball in there. Yep, then just real slow, very slow. You're just going to try it all down. You'll put your pen in the top. Yep, I'll do mine in the bottom, because that's all I have. All right, guys, I'm sweating, I'm breathing, I'm breathing heavy, doing the work the entire time, and that's how we're building the capacity to do the work. All right, the key there is we're not just doing a sprint in one direction. We are doing all kinds of different moves we use we use the pulls, we use lateral movement, we use squats, we use presses. So that's the key to being all around fit so you can go out, work in your garden, cut the grass, breathe more and play around with your stay.
Speaker 1:
Yep, you good. Yeah, we're good. Let's wrap this up, all right. Well how are you doing? That was a workout, it was good. I need your towel.
Speaker 2:
We only did two circuits, guys. We did two circuits and we did do them really with much intensity because it was more about being demonstrative, thankfully, yeah, well, it doesn't take much for me to sweat. I was sweating before we even started today. But the idea is, hopefully you notice the different moves that we did and I don't know if you noticed, but I noticed when I was trying to talk I was having a harder time catching my breath.
Speaker 1:
I was glad you were doing most of the talking.
Speaker 2:
So, guys, that is how we build work capacity. If you are looking to get in shape, if you're saying you know, I'm just tired of not being able to do the things I like to do or I used to do, reach out to us. You can get us at eight one, two, five, seven, six, seventy six, twenty five. So go to our web page at rock solid families dot org. So yeah, you know, don't allow your summer to come and go, yeah, and think, man, I, I don't even know if I can go kayaking with my kids or go hiking anymore. They, they just don't trust that I'll get through it.
Speaker 1:
Well, a lot of people don't know that you as well as do coaching in our office here at St Leon, indiana. You also are a personal fitness trainer, so you know you do one-on-one sessions with folks who are trying to get back on, you know, on the horse and try to get back in shape and and need some help and some guidance. And so you, you work, do workout plans and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:
so reach out like, specifically, I do not tend to take on, uh, people who are trained to bulk up or bodybuilding, because we use fitness as part of the mental health components. Yeah right, and so we are much more about the, the full body all around fitness, like the workout that you just saw. So, if you like, if you do want to uh bodybuild or something, still I can refer you to different people that, uh, that I know and trust, so we can still help you with that.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so thank you so much for listening to the rock solid families podcast. Building a stronger community.
Speaker 2:
Even with strength, one family at a time Make it a great day rock solid families wants to thank maxwell construction for sponsoring the rock solid families podcast. For over 30 years, maxwell construction has been a leader in turning dreams into realities building schools, banks, restaurants and many other commercial and public facilities. Maxwell Construction has made it their priority to not just build buildings but to build into their community. So if you have any construction needs, call them at 812-537-2200. Rock solid families wants to thank casey's outdoor solutions for sponsoring the rock solid families podcast. Casey's has grown to be one of the largest and most unique garden centers and gift shops in the Cincinnati tri-state area. Whether you are looking to take on that next landscape project or simply add a little home decor to your house, casey's has you covered. Located at 21481 State Line Road, lawrenceburg, indiana, call them today at 812-537-3800. Let Casey's help you add beauty to your home.
