Functional Fitness Is Fun, Easy

by Krista Jahnke

Karen DeCoster sees the speaker boxes at Detroit's Hart Plaza as an aerobic step jungle, and the entrance in the back of Joe Louis Arena as her personal StairMaster.

The benches along the Riverwalk serve as push-up and triceps dipping stations. The spiral structure at the end of that route makes a good plyometric playground.

Sound funny? It's a form of functional fitness that DeCoster, enviably trim and buff at age 46, swears by.

"People are getting in these ruts, these plateaus," she says. "It's the same thing over and over. They do the same three bicep curls. I can do something out here with a bench and work my entire upper body. And I'm having fun. Every time out I find something new. Like a planter. I can do something with a planter."

Functional fitness is a growing fad. Its premise is that instead of mindlessly using machines at the gym, you can get a better workout by doing things humans were designed to do – jump, run, lift and move heavy things, including yourself.

DeCoster, a certified public accountant who lives in Clinton Township, used to keep fit mainly by cycling. For the past four years, she has relied on her lunchtime functional workout in downtown Detroit.

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August 27, 2009

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