What could be a better indicator that you’re feeling good than hearing your alarm clock go off and wanting to get up?

Maybe making it through a demanding work day and still wanting to take a walk, do some yard work, or work out even though you ate a late supper? Or bending quickly to pick up something you dropped and realizing that not only do you feel supple and nimble but also that the move produced none of those little aches and pains that spontaneous movement sometimes creates?

Invariably when any of these occur, two other things happen: your energy level increases and your mood improves. Who doesn’t want either of those?

Oddly enough, none of the aforementioned examples come from you working on your health and fitness with the effort yielding clear and direct results.

While dropping 10 pounds of unwanted weight or 2 minutes off your best time in a 10k race will certainly make you feel good, I’ll argue that those end results are unlikely unless those aforementioned examples of feeling good come first. Moreover, I’ll argue that most of you value those examples of “feeling good” more.

So how can you make sure that “feeling good” happens? By making changes in the way you eat and exercise that produce improvements in what we now call your functional fitness.

Functional fitness is nothing more than the term suggests: your ability to function not in the weight room or at a specific sport, but through your typical day.

For instance, in Phil Gaimon’s book, Pro Cycling on 10 Dollars a Day: From Fat Kid to Euro Pro (Velo Press, 2014), Gaimon writes that when he returned to the gym one year after a season of racing, he could not do 10 pushups. So despite being one of the best hill climbers in North America and having phenomenal aerobic capacity, Gaimon was functionally unfit.

Anyone who struggles to do 10 pushups will also struggle doing jobs around the house that require forceful pushing, like using a lawn mower on a hill or moving the refrigerator to clean behind it.

In Gaimon’s case, regaining pushing strength would be as simple as doing three sets of as many pushups as he could muster two or three times a week. But how could you improve your pushing strength if you can’t or don’t want to do pushups — and especially not bench presses?

Plate presses.

To start, take two 5-pound plates and assume the typical bench press position. Put the two plates together on your sternum and place your hands on the plates.

Press the plates together with enough force so that when you lift them off your sternum into the air they remain together.

Do that up-down motion a few times focusing on safety. Once you acclimate to the movement, the real work begins.

This time, before the up-down motion begins, press the plates together with as much force as you can muster. With this sort of tension on the pectorals, the up-down motion will be much harder.

But the beauty of this “harder” is that you can make it easier — or even harder — when needed by simply reduce the pressing-in pressure a bit so that you can still continue the up-down motion.

If you reach 12 reps and realize your goal of reaching 15 will be too easy, pause for a moment, press those plates together even more forcefully than before, and then do the final 3 at a slower pace. Do the opposite if you know you won’t reach your goal number,

You can take this example, apply it to your current situation, and construct an effective series of workouts that allow you to feel really good because they’ll increase functional fitness.

Want to maintain a faster pace on those walks you sometimes take with 12-year-old granddaughter? Because they strengthen your hamstrings, glutes, and quads, walking lunges just might do the trick — even if you don’t hoist a barbell over your head or hold dumbbells in your hands.

While adding weight certainly helps, increasing the speed of the walking lunges in this instance is possibly even more beneficial.

Want to increase the strength in your lower back in order to stop seeing a chiropractor? While working on a previously injured body part is potentially dangerous, it may be worth a try if you’re cautious, focus on the sensations produced, and use an exercise ball to do a modified version of hyperextensions.

To begin, place the ball and your knees on the floor and drape your body over the ball. Place your palms on the floor and — this is crucial! — initiate the movement of elevating your upper body a bit by engaging the muscles at the base of your lower back.

Do not simply jerk your head or your upper back upward, and to be safe, press against the floor with your palms just a bit until you acclimate to the movement.

After you feel comfortable, place your hands behind your head and slowly increase the range of motion. After a few sessions where you perform a modified movement, strive to get your back parallel to the ground.