What is functional fitness training?

More and more people are signing up to gyms these days, but worryingly a lot of those people seem to believe that the quality of the gym they join depends more on the definition of the TV screens in the treadmills than any definition their torso might see from training correctly. There are far too much emphasis is being placed on the leisure rather than the fitness… but fortunately there is another option for those who truly want to improve. Any training can be classed as functional training depending on what you’re training for.

The goal here is not to argue the vagueness of the term, but to highlight the benefits. Functional fitness training in this article is refer to an exercise or group of exercises that mimic, adapt and allow the improved performance of life’s daily tasks. This referee to the majority of people.

Improving Quality of life.

Here a goal could be, and usually is, to improve quality of life outside the gym. That’s to have an increased capacity for recreation play.  This could be a grandmother having fun with her grandchildren, or a teenager playing football.

Life’s daily tasks include movement in the 6 degrees of freedom. Namely back/forward, up/down, left/right, roll, pitch, and yaw. Or more specifically human movement, push/pull, jump/squat, step, twist, and bend. So functional training is training that seeks to improve as many of these movements as possible. So consider functional fitness training defined… for this article at least!

The many benefits of functional fitness training

Much of what goes on in gyms today is impossible to recreate outside of that environment. Functional fitness training allows you to develop strength in a controlled environment.Many favorable improvements gained from functional fitness training are broken down to the amount of ‘fitness bases’ covered in any one session. Indeed in one movement you could be improving strength, coordination, balance, agility, accuracy, flexibility, endurance and stamina. There are very few activities that can produce an improvement in both neurological fitness (balance, coordination, agility, accuracy) and physical skills (strength, flexibility, endurance, stamina). Neurological fitness is achieved using large number of the body’s joints and muscles.

Training your muscles to work together this way means more focus is on training movements rather than isolating individual muscles. Anytime your body is moving rather than remaining stationary you rely on dynamic balance as opposed to static balance. Dynamic balance requires a great deal of core stability amongst other things. Functional fitness training will only seek to further improve core stability and strength. This has the knock-on effect of improving most aspects of your life, in particular, improved intra-abdominal pressure, posture, and injury prevention. So, functional fitness training boasts numerous physiological benefits, but there is more to it than this.

Some Important aspects

Some important aspects of functional fitness training can be scaled to suit anybody’s level of ability. Intensity, duration, and resistance can be altered on all of the movements trained to match the individual levels of fitness. This will allow everyone, and anyone to get the most out of their training. On top of this, functional fitness training can be different every session. A trait that should be absolutely necessary in any fitness plan or schedule. Don’t get bored with being conventional, try functional fitness training for more variety.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is the return from your exercise investment that you get from functional fitness training. Your exercise investment includes the money you spend on your gym membership, kit, nutrition, travel along with the time effort you put into your training. Most people using conventional gyms sees the value is more in the luxuries and less in the fitness aspects. Where as, when it comes to functional fitness training, the return you get is the increase in your capacity to enjoy your recreations and play having reached your goals.

In short, it gives you an increased work capacity over all. This means in any given time period you can do more of whatever it is you want to do. Essentially, functional fitness training is real fitness training!

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