Functional training is a component everyone should include in their regular fitness routine. Functional training focuses on movement patterns and helps you to improve your abilities in tasks you may perform daily. It is also an effective method in helping your body to work efficiently as a whole. Some examples of everyday activities functional training can help with include:
- Sitting
- Standing
- Walking
- Picking up heavy items
Functional training can also help you to prepare when competing in any athletic sporting activity. Regardless, the purpose of functional training is to help with improving specific movements that are intentional. Functional training is designed to help you outside of the gym with your everyday activities. It is a practical part of exercising and will be more useful to you in your daily life.
More About Functional Training
What constitutes a workout fitting into the functional training category? Generally, when you are doing functional training exercises, it will be comprised of compound exercises. Compound exercises are exercises that use more than one muscle group to perform that specific movement. Some examples of compound exercises are:
- Lunges
- Deadlifts
- Squats
- Push-ups
Compound exercises like these are great because they are reflective of the muscle groups you will use daily, unlike isolation exercises. Isolation exercises are designed to focus on one specific area, this can be necessary for after an injury or in trying to tone one particular group, but compound exercises target multiple muscle groups.
What Makes A Good Functional Training Routine
An excellent functional training routine will be one that utilizes many different planes, meaning that you need to be moving in many different directions, as you do with squats, lunges, and pushups. It is also important to also integrate rotational movements into your routine as well.
You will want to stray away from machines when doing functional training. When you are using a machine, they are designed to move in very specific ways and to tone specific areas. By using free weights, you have much more control over the movements, and that is an integral component to effective functional training.
When doing functional training, you will want a routine that will be most effective for you and your lifestyle. That’s why the experts at The Body Shop will consult with you on a plan that is specific to you and your body. Let’s make a drastic improvement to your life; we guarantee that you will feel better about bending down to pick things up or carrying groceries!