7 Functional Fitness Training

Functional fitness is more than simply working out a muscle group like the arms, back, or chest; it works out all muscle groups to help promote balance and stability in your entire body. To achieve this, functional fitness moves should be done through a full range of motion, allowing you to work muscles from multiple angles. Functional fitness exercises use the weight of your own body as resistance and move in real-life patterns, and avoid restrictive movements not found in everyday life. If you're not familiar with functional fitness, there are seven moves you should know before you try them out at home:

What is functional training?

Functional training is a method of exercise that focuses on training your body to do real-life movements. It is designed to improve your functional strength, balance, and coordination.

Functional training differs from traditional weightlifting because it doesn't focus on building muscle mass for aesthetic reasons — although you may see some muscle growth due to functional training. Instead, it focuses on strengthening your body so you can do daily activities more easily and safely.

What are the seven functional movements?

Here are seven functional movements that are essential for healthy living:

Squat

Squats are a functional movement that can be done anywhere. However, when you squat with a weight, you require more balance and stability to prevent falling over or awkwardly twisting your body. This strengthens your core and legs while also improving hip mobility.

Rotation

Rotational exercises, like the medicine ball toss, help improve your athletic performance by increasing power in your core, hips, torso, and shoulders. Rotational movements also increase flexibility in your spine and hips while helping to prevent injury from repetitive stress on your joints.

Hinge

The hinge is one of the most basic movements in all fitness, yet many athletes and coaches overlook it. The hinge best describes bending forward at the hip joint while keeping your back flat, knees locked out, and elbows bent. You can perform this movement using various tools, including barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, and even bands, depending on your experience with this movement pattern.

Push

The push is another basic functional movement pattern that should be performed frequently throughout your training program. This movement involves pressing or pushing an implement away from you using your arms (eccentrically) or legs (concentrically). Exercises like bench press, pushups, and dips are great examples of pushing exercises.

Pull

Pulls are some of the best exercises to build muscle and strength, and they also help you maintain a healthy balance between your chest, back, shoulders and arms. A pull is a weight training exercise involving pulling a weight or resistance band towards your body. The movement can be done using dumbbells, cables, resistance bands, and other equipment designed for this purpose.

Lunge

Lunges are an excellent exercise for your quadriceps or thighs, as well as your glutes and calves. Some people think of them as just an exercise for the legs. Still, lunges are a full-body movement that engage your core muscles to help stabilize your body and keep it from moving all over the place during the movement. Try doing lunges and see how many muscles you feel are working!

Gait

Gait is the pattern of movement of the body's limbs in locomotion. It is a form of un-patterned coordination, which appears to be controlled by the central nervous system. When one moves from point A to point B, there are many different ways of accomplishing this task. We can walk, run, skip and hop; we can walk on two or four legs; we can even crawl on our hands and knees or roll along like a wheel. These are all examples of gaits in human movement.

Why Is Functional Training Important?

The following are some of the essential reasons why functional training should be part of your fitness routine:

It uses your body efficiently

If you're trying to lose weight or gain muscle mass, functional training can help you achieve your goals faster. Functional exercises work for multiple muscle groups at once, allowing you to burn more calories during each workout. In addition, these exercises use more muscles than isolation exercises, which wienablingperform more reps before exhaustion sets in. This means greater calorie-burning potential over time!

Increases coordination, agility & balance

Functional exercises improve coordination and agility by increasing neuromuscular coordination, how well your brain communicates with your muscles so they can work together efficiently without wasting energy on unnecessary movements like shakiness or stiffness. Functional exercises also help improve balance by improving stability.

Prevents injuries

Functional training helps prevent injuries during everyday activities such as lifting, carrying, and pushing or pulling objects. By strengthening your core muscles and improving balance and coordination, you can lift with better form, reduce the risk of injury and increase overall muscle tone.

Strengthens your core

Functional training strengthens your core muscles — located in your torso — which help you maintain good posture and support your spine when lifting heavy objects or performing other challenging physical tasks. Stronger core muscles also reduce back pain caused by poor posture or weak abdominal muscles.

Increases flexibility & mobility

This training will increase your range of motion so you can perform tasks such as lifting objects without straining your muscles or joints. If you have limited flexibility or mobility, functional training may help you regain some of it and prevent further loss of range of motion as you age.

Are the lat pulldown and the bench press functional opposites?

The bench press and the lat pulldown are two popular exercises often performed in the gym. Both movements work the chest, but they do so slightly differently.

The bench press is a horizontal push exercise that works your chest, triceps, and shoulders to move a weight from chest level to above your head. The lat pulldown is an upper body pulling movement that targets your lats and biceps to move a weight from above your head toward your waist.

The primary difference between these exercises is how they target different muscle groups. The bench press primarily targets the pecs, while the lat pulldown targets the lats and biceps. However, both exercises involve secondary muscle groups like the triceps, shoulders, and back muscles.