Functional Performance Instead of Underwater Weighing, Electronic Impedance, Or Skin Calipers

The car is fully packed and the family is ready for vacation. And when I say fully packed, I mean that 800 pounds of luggage is stuffed into the trunk, as well as in and around the kids in the back seat. You can hardly see out of the rear view mirror because you've packed so much into this poor car.

You drive down the highway for the first 100 miles and notice that your car's normal pick up seems to be lacking, and the fuel gauge is dropping faster than usual, so you pull off the road and decide to try something drastic. One by one you take each piece of luggage out of the trunk, and the back seat of the car, and place them all carefully alongside the road. I mean you eliminate everything but the wife and kids. Then you proceed to put the car in gear and drive on down the road.

Suddenly you notice that your car's pick up and the gas gauge are both back to normal. In other words the physical performance of your car has suddenly improved now that you've eliminated all the excess weight. In engineering terms this phenomena is commonly known as improving your car's "Power to Weight Ratio."

Cars, Planes, and Human Bodies

The power to weight principle applies whether you're throwing excess weight out of your car or out of an airplane. Maintain the horsepower, eliminate non-functional, excess weight, and performance automatically improves. Interestingly enough, it applies just as well to the human body. Hang on to your horsepower (your muscle/strength), eliminate the excess weight (fat) and like magic, you physical performance automatically improves (and vice versa).

A Direct Relationship

But what I'd like to focus on here is the direct relationship between your physical efficiency and your functional performance. That is to say when your physical efficiency (your % of body fat) improves, your functional performance (i.e. running, jumping, climbing) automatically improves. When your physical efficiency (your % of body fat) deteriorates, your performance automatically deteriorates.

Let's Get Practical About Measuring Body Composition

That being the case, I'd like to pose the following question. If physical efficiency (body composition) is automatically reflected in functional performance, why does anyone need to measure anyone's percentage of body fat with under water weighing, electronic impedance, or with skin calipers? Furthermore, if physical efficiency is automatically reflected in functional performance, why would anyone ever bother measuring anyone's BMI?

It seems to me that the aim of improving anyone's percentage of body fat, their body composition, or their physical efficiency (these are all the same thing) is to improve their functional performance. And if you improve their functional performance, you're automatically improving their physical efficiency as well as their percentage of body fat, and their body composition.

Choose One Functional Activity and Master It

So why not just choose one functional activity (i.e. pull ups, dips, or rope jumping), get a base line, train to improve that one activity, day after day, week after week, month after month, and recognize that the participant's physical efficiency, their percentage of body fat, and their body composition are all improving automatically, simultaneously?

Why even waste anyone's time with underwater weighing, electronic impedance, skin fold measurements, or BMI, when all of these are directly and automatically reflected in functional performance changes? To eliminate obesity simply choose one functional activity (pull ups, dips, or rope climbing), practice it week after week, month after month, master it, and maintain the mastery. When mastery is maintained, obesity (physical inefficiency) becomes impossible.

Rick Osbourne spent 17 years as a physical educator and coach. He currently writes for a living, and serves as the Executive Director of Operation Pull Your Own Weight, (http://www.pullyourownweight.net) an informational web site that's dedicated to eliminating childhood obesity in one decade. Osbourne is also a public speaker, and he's recently published a book entitled "Operation Pull Your Own Weight: A Radically Simple Solution to Childhood Obesity," (on the website) that provides practical minded parents and educators with "A simple, easily implemented, easily documented, and affordable solution to childhood obesity," according to the American Society of Exercise Physiologists (http://www.asep.org). Osbourne can be reached at Osbourne.rick@gmail.com

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