How to Incorporate Functional Training Into Your Workout

When it comes to choosing how you exercise, you have several options. If you are looking to sweat it all out with a heart-racing, high-intensity interval training should be your choice. Yoga is a great form of exercise if you are looking for a way to unwind your mind during strength training. Functional training mimics the movements you perform in everyday life. Functional strength training relates to daily movements such as sitting and standing, bending over, and twisting from side to side. It makes these daily movements easier and pain-free.

What is Functional Training?

Functional training is a type of exercise that helps you perform activities in everyday life more easily. Functional training can be helpful for improved athletic performance, injury prevention, and other everyday tasks. Our bodies are designed to move in different ways, categorized into human movement patterns. Our bodies are made to push and pull with our upper body, hinge at the hips, bend into a squat, lunge or step up and rotate.

The purpose of functional training is to keep your muscles functioning as they were designed. Functional training uses compound movements, meaning you bend at multiple joints and use several muscle groups to achieve the movement. If you observe how you move throughout the day, you will notice that you rarely do; you just bend in one plane of motion to accomplish any movement. Many people don’t use each of the movements mentioned above daily, especially if they are glued to a desk. This makes functional strength training very essential.

How Does Functional Training Work?

Functional training works by using multiple muscles to build strength and muscle functionally. Functional exercises look similar to movements you would make in your daily life, such as picking up a heavy object, swinging a baseball bat, or carrying groceries. Thus, functional training works to improve these daily activities.

Although many exercises fit the definition of functional training, others don’t. Less-functional strength training has different characteristics and goals.

Workouts that target a specific body part. Non-functional exercises focus on only one muscle or a muscle group in one part of the body. Talk of “leg day” or “arms day” at the gym. Traditional strength training exercises like bicep curls, calf raises, and seat leg presses are less functional.

Focusing on the appearance of certain muscles. Many bodybuilders and non-functional exercises aim to increase the size of a specific muscle. Functional training, however, prioritizes muscle movement over muscle appearance.

What is The Goal of Functional Training?

Although everyone has their own personal motivations and fitness goals, they all boil down to these three:

• Look better.
• Feel better.
• Perform better.

Functional training helps with the last point, perform better, by helping you to:

• Upgrade the way your body moves and functions.
• Improve your strength across movement patterns.
• Increase the physical performance of your body.

If done right, functional training has a huge carry-over to life outside the gym. So, everyone can benefit from it whether they are practicing sports or the game of life.

How to Incorporate Functional Training Into Your Workouts

Functional workouts can look different across multiple muscle groups. Some common functional exercises include:

• Push-ups – These are great for upper body strength as well as core stability and a great exercise for scaling up or down depending on one’s ability.
• Planking – This exercise helps you strengthen your core, arms, underarms, and legs. It also improves your posture and stability, and overall strength.
• Jumping Jacks – Jumping jacks stimulate all the vital muscles in your body. Jumping jacks are a plyometric exercise that strengthens multiple muscles simultaneously. They also help burn fat.
• Walking Lunges – This exercise works with your body unilaterally, which is great for fixing any imbalances in the body.
• Deadlifts – They are super effective at increasing functional strength as they activate your lower body muscles. They also train you for the functional activity of safely lifting objects from the floor in everyday life.
• Squats with Overhead Reach – This exercise targets your quads, glutes, and hamstrings. It’s a great exercise for building strength.
• Jump Squats – Activate muscles in your legs, like the quadriceps, glutes, and hamstrings, as well as your core and back muscles, making it a great functional exercise.
• Lateral Bounds – Lateral bounds target the muscles of your lower body; hips, thighs, calves, ankles, and feet. They stabilize the muscles of the core.
• Jumping, lunging, or stepping onto an elevated platform – Jumping activates the fast-twitch muscle fibers associated with building muscle, strength, and power.

All these movements target more than one muscle or a muscle group at a time.

How to Get The Most Out of a Functional Training

Functional training is not one size fits all. The benefits and drawbacks are different for everyone, depending on their goals, the exercise they practice, and more.

Combine it with other exercises, different styles of exercise can help you reach similar goals. Exercises that target only a few leg muscles can help runners improve their speed. Use functional training along with other workouts to improve your fitness.

Specificity is important. Chair squats will help you get up from chairs than jumping jacks. Your skill in an activity will be better when your functional training closely resembles it.

Functional training is safer than other types of exercise, but it still carries the risk of injury. Perform intense functional workouts in the right way to get the most out of your workout. Talk to your doctor or fitness instructor if you have any questions or concerns about signing up for a functional training program.

Final Words

Functional training is essential in helping us navigate our daily lives with ease. Thus, we highly recommend that you incorporate the above techniques into your workouts. If you are looking to enroll in a functional training program, we invite you to Next Level Fitness. At Next Level Fitness, we are a team of certified professionals highly dedicated to making your fitness journey as effective as possible. Join us today for the best functional strength training program.