Functional fitness training is a popular physical fitness program that many health-conscious individuals want to try. This is because it is proven to provide a lot of benefits and involves exercise routines that are convenient to perform. Also, this can be accomplished even in the comfort of your own home.
Functional training is believed to have started from the rehabilitation profession. Occupational and physical therapists use the training routines to help patients improve their movements following an injury or surgery. They use exercises with motions similar to what their patients need to do at home to boost their recovery and enable them to live their normal lives quickly.
For example, patients engaged in jobs that involve lifting are made to undergo rehabilitation, which involves exercises intended to strengthen their lifting ability.
So, what is functional fitness training?
Here’s a brief discussion of the essential things you ought to know about functional training. This highlights the actual purpose of the training and helps you determine if this fitness regimen best suits your needs or not.
What Is Functional Training?
Technically, functional training is a workout program that aims to develop exercises that will enable individuals to do their usual activities without the risk of incurring further injuries. It helps you become better in doing various daily activities, such as safely carrying objects, comfortably squatting when picking something up, and conveniently sprinting for the bus.
Functional training is intended to strengthen your body differently. It effectively enhances your life without performing intense exercises inside the gym. Instead, this includes activities that train your body to perform your daily activities more naturally and comfortably. Functional training focuses on doing various movement patterns to achieve real-world objectives. It uses weight-bearing activities that target the torso’s core muscles and compound movements or multiple joint exercises.
What Are the Benefits of Functional Training?
Functional training is designed to help people become more physically fit and capable of performing their day-to-day activities. Aside from that, this also provides the following benefits.
1. Improves Bodily Function
Functional training is proven to help improve your body’s overall function, as well as boost your endurance and muscle strength. It can develop your body’s muscles and stability that allow you to accomplish your everyday activities efficiently.
The training targets your daily movements, so the workouts offer a valuable and practical style of fitness that works for almost everyone. It helps you do various activities like playing a sport on the weekend, carrying heavy groceries, or lifting the kids out of your car with utmost ease.
2. Increases Coordination, Balance, Flexibility, and Posture
Functional exercises include a wide range of motions. Every move can make you do various positions that allow your muscles to work within their natural range. As a result, the movements boost resistance and flexibility, eventually leading to better mobility.
As you do some functional exercises, you are continuously boosting your body’s functional strength along with your overall coordination and flexibility.
3. Helps Relieve Joint Pain
People suffering from back, joint, or muscle pain are encouraged to undergo functional training to manage body pains. This fitness program is usually considered a regimen that sits between physical therapy and personal training. This is because it involves regenerative practices that help restore the body.
Also, functional training can significantly reduce chronic pain in the knees, back, joints, and neck. This allows you to perform a broader range of movement conveniently when doing different tasks that are previously hard to complete.
4. Reduces Risk of Injury
Doing functional training significantly reduces your risk of getting injured. The training does this by boosting your body to become more resilient in coping with physical stress. Moreover, given that the included workout routines mimic the body’s common movement patterns, your daily exertions become more bearable and convenient to cope with.
Regular functional training allows your muscles and the soft tissue ligaments surrounding the muscles to gain more strength. Thus, you can strengthen your connective tissue, which is good news because the areas where the tendons and ligaments are located are more prone to injuries.
5. Provides Better Understanding of the Body
Functional training allows you to use your body as your gym. You will rely entirely on your body to do the functional exercises included in the program. Also, you need to be more in tune with your body and become more mindful of what you feel while working out.
What Are the Common Functional Training Exercises?
Functional training exercises are aimed to boost your upper and lower body’s capability to handle day-to-day activities. Due to this, most functional training programs include exercises that target the upper and lower parts of the body. Typically, these exercises include the following.
Functional Training Patterns for the Upper Body
1. Horizontal and Vertical Pushing
- Push-ups
- Overhead press
- Dumbbell p
2. Horizontal and Vertical Pulling
- Face pulls
- Pull-ups
- Dumbbell r
Functional Training Patterns for the Lower Body
1. Lower Body Hinge
- Back extensions
- Romanian deadlifts
- Hip thrusts
2. Lower Body Lunge
- Reverse lunges
- Split squats
- Step-ups
3. Lower Body Squats
- Goblet squats
- Landmine squats
- Barbell squats
Takeaway
Functional fitness training is a convenient and realistic fitness program that health-conscious individuals should try doing. This helps train your body to be more resilient in handling the physical stress caused by performing your daily activities. This fitness regimen is also worth exploring as it provides a list of benefits you usually need daily. Finally, functional training provides you with practical exercises without having to go to the gym to achieve your fitness goals.
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