Functional Fitness: your alternative to training for anything else. Train for your real life and reap real life benefits

Functional fitness is training for real life. One experienced fitness trainer and specialist defines functional fitness in the following manner:

“…to perform tasks in  training that replicate the movements found in life.  Lifting, throwing, catching and pushing are activities that we all encounter at some point and our training should reflect this fact.”

 A training regimen that uses activities you already do to make you stronger and more efficient at those very same activities. While traditional training – either weight lifting or cardio workouts like running or elliptical training – focuses on repeated isolations of single muscles or groups, it may not make you any better at raking, shoveling, maintaining your balance while stretching from tip toes to reach the jar on the top shelf, or picking up your squirmy, wriggly children.

Simply put, functional workouts are multi-joint, multi-muscle exercises. Imagine a lunge with a bicep curl, or an overhead press. A squat with an anterior raise, top to bottom cross over movements like woodcutters and the ever popular burpees. While you may not be squatting and dropping on command in your everyday life, you do want to be able to get down to the floor and back up again with ease, grace and without causing yourself pain or injury. These are functional moves.

When your fitness plan makes you better at all the things you do every day to serve your clients, your family, your community and your friends, you’re really integrating fitness into your life. While isolated workouts of individual muscle groups will surely lead to increases in strength and make it easier to track such changes, training moves that use the basic patterns of everyday life lead to noticeable improvements outside the gym as well. And that’s really what you’re training for, isn’t it? 

 Remember that your alignment in functional moves is key to staying healthy and uninjured. Should you experience pain in a joint, your back or that persists more than two days or is acutely bothersome, come in right away for an evaluation. Seeking treatment early is the smart thing to do, and we know you’re smart because you even work out smart

Author: Blessing Anyatonwu

Earnest Holistic Health in Austin, TX, provides nutritional counseling and chiropractic care.

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