What Is Functional Fitness?
Also known as functional exercise. This is any workout that adapts or develops exercises allowing individuals to perform activities of everyday life more easily and without risk of injury.
Even though you can lift heavy weights at the gym and do 20 minutes of high intensity interval training every other day, it certainly does not mean that the next time you carry your 65 lb. suitcase on your way to the airport, you won't throw your back out.
For an independent life you will want to exercise in a way that focuses on training the body so that it can handle day to day real life activities, like lugging groceries, picking up your kids or putting away the dishes. This is functional fitness.
Rather than focusing on lifting a certain amount of weight, or the proper form of a particular exercise, functional fitness trains us to become better at real life positions and to perform every day activities that we are all tasked with.
Our Muscles Working Together
Your typical weight training or strength training workout isolates specific muscles, but, neglects to train the body to use multiple muscle groups together, but, functional exercise does integrate different muscles and through proper form and motion teaches them to work together.
This produces overall fitness to the whole body working in unison.
Finding Balance in Functional Fitness
When we focus on weights machines and compound exercises, these neglect to address a essential need we humans have for day to day life and that is balance.
Balance training exercises, like the one-legged squat for example, is more useful for everyday life than leg pressing 500 pounds. Why?
Because stability is what serves you in everyday life. When you have to reach for something in a high cabinet, or walking up and down stairs are a couple of daily activities that require balance.
Balance is an essential part of everyday life, including, regular tasks of walking, using the stairs and reaching for something, but, it goes beyond that.
Training your body to control and balance its own weight can serve you when you are young and as you age because it makes you stronger, more stable and therefore allows you to avoid falls, which, are some of the most common injuries seen in seniors.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 3 adults age 65 or older suffer a fall that results in moderate to severe injuries, including, the debilitating hip fracture or the very serious head trauma, both of which can increase the risks of early death. ( http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/falls/adultfalls.html )
How will you begin training functional fitness into your everyday workouts?
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