When you train to make common, everyday tasks easier to complete, you are engaging in core functional fitness training. These functional mobility exercises usually involve the entire body or at least a number of muscles to build core strength and stability.
Developing your functional strength by practicing every day with functional fitness equipment motions like squatting, reaching, and lifting heavy objects can improve your health and safety. Before doing anything new, be sure you know how to exercise safely. Before beginning an exercise regimen or making any changes, such as adding more advanced moves or heavier weights, it is recommended to speak with a doctor or physical therapist.
How Does Functional Fitness Work?
When you engage in core functional fitness, also known as functional training, your muscles learn to coordinate with one another through repetitions of everyday activities like playing with a toddler or mowing the lawn.
These low-impact functional mobility exercises, which can be performed at home with minimal or no exercise functional fitness equipment, can benefit all fitness levels. To better handle whatever challenges life brings, you should work on improving your agility, balance, and coordination. Strength training routines are crucial for maintaining functional mobility or the ability to move your body, yet this is frequently disregarded.
Benefits of Functional Fitness Training
The benefits of functional strength training are clear. To begin with, it makes it easier to carry out routine duties. Lifting a heavy shopping bag isn’t something anyone wants to do, is it? Strength training with a functional focus can help you avoid injury while simultaneously building muscle. Functional training also has the following advantages:
Strengthening and Stabilizing
Your core is essential for almost every activity. However, studies published in Sports Health show that not engaging your core muscles increases your risk of injury. Functional mobility exercises, such as planks, can train your core muscles to engage automatically, enhancing posture and stability.
Enhancements to Stability and Motor Control
One could assume they were born clumsy if they frequently trip, lose their footing, or are otherwise unsteady on their feet. All you need to do is work on your balance. Utilizing dynamic movements, like single-leg deadlifts or reverse lunges, allows you to simultaneously stretch and shorten your muscles, which aids in their elasticity and strength training.
This can help you become more stable in your daily life and athletic endeavors over time. According to studies, the capacity to walk, run, and jump more effectively is correlated with better balance.
Preventing Injuries
Muscle imbalances and unstable joints are two issues that functional strength training can assist with. Whether you’re engaging in regular activities or sports, this will help keep you safe. Functional strength training can help athletes—like runners and cyclists—do more than just perform better; it can also help them remain active in the sport. Squats and lunges strengthen your lower body. Stabilizing your core with planks may enhance your running gait and keep your posture while cycling.
Active Hip and Gluteal Muscles
Hip and gluteal strengthening functional mobility exercises are common in functional strength training. Runners and bikers rely on this for essential mechanics. Gaining strength in your glutes and hips will provide you an advantage in many sports, especially sprinting and climbing.
Versatility and Portability
Walking lunges, scapular push-ups, and other dynamic stretching exercises are common in functional strength training. Improve your flexibility and mobility with these mobility-focused stretches. A lesser chance of overuse injuries is another benefit. Functional training is a great approach to keeping moving and maintaining joint mobility, especially as you get older.
More Effective Fat Loss
Functional strength workouts, due to their dynamic nature, can increase calorie expenditure more than static functional mobility exercises. That’s because you’re pushing yourself to your limits, which raises your heart rate. It’s more taxing on your energy levels than the more conventional kind of strength training that targets a single muscle group at a time.
Improving Time Efficiency
If you’ve ever used the Peloton app for a 15- or 20-minute high-intensity interval training session, you know you can get a lot done in a short period. Because it frequently incorporates compound motions that engage numerous muscle groups concurrently, functional strength training is an excellent method for obtaining rapid exercise.
Functional Training Guide
One-Repetition Maximum
The maximum weight in a single repetition during an activity is called your 1-rep max in core functional fitness. If you can only lift a 15-kg barbell for one repetition of bicep curls, for instance, that’s your one-rep max. You could do more sets with a lighter weight. What practical use does your one-repetition maximum have? Whether it’s pushing a door open, carrying groceries, or moving products onto shelves, your muscles are used in more functional ways every day.
Although these may not seem like typical forms of exercise, they really put your muscles to work. If you can only do five pounds of bicep curls each set—roughly the same as a gallon of milk—your muscles will get tired from just that one exercise, and you’ll have a harder time getting through the rest of your day. Lifting larger weights for longer periods and with more repetitions should be possible as your strength training progresses and your one-rep max rises. This will make it easier for you to move around and lift things in your daily life.
Joint-Sparing vs. Joint-Supporting Workouts
Exercises that engage more than one joint simultaneously are called multi-joint exercises. These workouts, which involve using numerous muscle groups simultaneously, are frequently called compound exercises. The typical squat is an example of an exercise that uses many joints at once; specifically, the hip, knee, and ankle all move in tandem throughout the movement.
When you want to work out a specific muscle area, try some single-joint functional mobility exercises. These require you to use just one joint. One kind of functional fitness equipment workout that isolates and strengthens a single joint is the bicep curl.
Because of their high functional value, multi-joint exercises should be a staple of any effective workout regimen. Just consider all the times you have to use more than one muscle group to get something done in a day. Since our bodies are built to move in several planes and directions, it’s far more usual for different muscle groups to function together efficiently. This is in contrast to isolating action at a single joint.
Upper Body Training
Carry the Kettlebells
An easy way to begin with core functional fitness with the many variants of the kettlebell carry is to stand with one or two kettlebells held in each hand. With your shoulders back and core tight, stride forward a few steps. Raise the weight or experiment with different kettlebell grips to increase the difficulty. Carrying heavy bags of groceries becomes much easier after completing this workout because it strengthens the core, shoulders, and hands.
Shoulder Press
With minor adjustments for functional fitness equipment and shoulder position, this exercise is good for targeting the muscles of the upper back, arms, and shoulders; it can be achieved with free weights, barbells, or functional fitness equipment. The muscles needed to raise objects above head height, such as placing a pot in a cupboard, are well worked out by this exercise.
Front Lunges
Raise your arms in the air, just like the name says. With your thumbs facing up, elevate both hands to shoulder level while keeping your elbows straight; this is the workout for you. This workout targets the muscles in your shoulders that allow you to raise your arm above. You use this motion when you want to pick up a small child to say hello or hold them in your arms.
You can do rows while seated on a rowing machine, while standing or bending over with free weights, or even while you’re on your feet with a variety of other functional mobility exercises. The back muscles that aid in posture maintenance and the arm muscles that enable a pulling motion are both worked out while one rows. When you need to steady your upper body or lift a heavy door, you rely on these muscles.
Lower Body Training
Deadlifts
The back, glutes, and hamstrings are the primary muscles worked during a deadlift. Proper form before adding weight is key to preventing back injuries. This workout targets the muscles needed to lift heavy objects securely from low surfaces. To advance in a deadlift, attempt a combo move.
Begin with a barbell or free-weight deadlift and then switch to a bent-over row. This motion involves bending at the hips and pulling the weights toward your chest using your core and upper body. Because it is a complex exercise, it demands a high level of muscular strength and coordination and works for numerous muscle groups all at once.
Squats
The muscles you use on a daily basis to sit up straight or bend over to pick something up off the floor can be strengthened with squats, an excellent multi-joint exercise. Going from a standard squat to one that incorporates an overhead press is a great way to step up your workout game. Your legs, abs, and arms are all worked out at once in this full-body exercise.
Lunges
There are a lot of ways to change up and advance the difficulty of lunges, just like any other compound exercise. To make sure you’re doing it right, begin with a forward lunge or a standstill lunge. Maintain proper knee-to-toe alignment and avoid inward bending. You can make the exercise more difficult by including weight, an abdominal twist, or an overhead press when you’re ready.
Lateral/Cross-Over Step-Up
Because you use your joints in all sorts of different ways every day, it’s best to train on all the other planes of motion. The seemingly innocuous act of stepping laterally constitutes a lateral step-up, another functional complex action that you perform unconsciously on a daily basis. Stabilizing your hips and pelvis, which is essential for fundamental functional mobility like walking, is another benefit of lateral step-ups. Raising the step height or using heavier weights will make this exercise more difficult.
A physical therapist is an excellent resource because they can assess your condition, determine your goals, and create an individualized workout plan to help you reach those goals. If you want to be sure you’re doing functional mobility exercises correctly and safely, see a physical therapist.
