When you exercise, is your goal to show off your ripped abs and huge delts at the beach? Or are you more interested in improving your ability to perform everyday tasks—like keeping up with your kids and playing sports with your buddies—and preventing future injury? If your answer is the latter, then you might be a good candidate for what’s being popularly referred to as “functional fitness.”
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The idea behind functional fitness is to train the body in the context of how it’s used in daily life. It focuses on multi-joint exercises, instead of a more isolated approach. Take groceries, for instance: When you bring in groceries, you may have to walk up some stairs with bags hanging from each hand; and once you get to the kitchen, you squat to place the bags on the floor and rotate and reach your arms up to place a heavy item on a high shelf. So instead of just doing a bicep curl, which only moves the elbow, a “functional” exercise would be to do a bicep curl and lunge, engaging elbow, hip, knee and ankle all at the same time. And instead of just doing a bench press, you would do a squat with an overhead press with a rotation.
In a functional fitness routine, the circuit of exercises resembles activities you perform every day. The routines combine moves like lunges and presses to involve the whole body.
Personal trainer Carmen Martin-Day, whose focus for the past 17 years has been functional fitness, tells the Washington Post that functional training can be tailored to anyone—from older folks to professional athletes:
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Functional fitness exercises emphasize core stability and can be done at home or in the gym. Exercise tools, such as fitness balls, kettle bells and weights are often used in these workouts. Studies have shown that these workouts are beneficial as part of a comprehensive program for older adults to improve balance, agility and muscle strength, and reduce the risk of falls. However, if you haven’t exercised for some time or have health problems, it’s a good idea to check with your doctor before starting any new exercise program.
Functional fitness exercise routines can include Up/Down Plank Pushups, Alternating Lunges to a Dumbbell Press, Explosive Kettleball Swings and Burpee to Squat Jumps..to name a few. If you’re interested in integrating more functional workouts into your routine, check out these sample exercises from MensFitness.com.
Curated Article from the Washington Post
