Functional Fitness: What It Is, And What’s In It For You!

Functional fitness and functional training are some of those buzz words or phrases that are dominating the fitness and gym circuits at present. Now, if you find yourself bewildered and grappling quite desperately for the true meaning of these terms, fear not – for we’re right at hand to break it down for you. While we’re at it, we’ll give you some benefits of following this method of fitness training, and why you should try and fit it into your fitness regime as well.

What is functional fitness?

Simply put, functional training sets your body up to excel while doing the common things in life or in sports. How does it do this? Well, its exercises and routines actively simulate everyday movement (for instance, getting up from a chair or bending down to pick something up from the floor) by stimulating and exercising all the muscles involved in that basic movement (this is opposed to normal movement or exercise, which usually involves only the use of one or a few muscles). This sort of training helps you perform the simple tasks of life in a much easier manner, while also boosting your core strength. Functional training typically uses kettlebells, weights and fitness balls, amongst other exercise tools. Now, the word ‘functional’ does make more sense when used together with training, doesn’t it?

Here are some of the benefits of functional training:

Burn the fat!

As you will find out almost as soon as you try it, functional fitness routines effectively employ full body workouts, which as a result, helps get rid of that extra bulk with ease. This in itself is a good enough reason to jump aboard the functional fitness juggernaut!

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Ease in doing everyday tasks

Functional training focuses on the everyday, conventional movements that form a large part of your life. This in turn, helps you perform everyday tasks with ease and with the least amount of discomfort. Invariably, this improves quality of life, while also boosting much needed endurance and strength.

Great starting point

For some of us, going to the gym or fitness center for the first time conjures up images of dread, and that’s enough to put us off from going to the gym altogether. Besides this, some of us older folks may find the forms of training too strenuous. Now, that’s just where functional fitness cuts through all the other forms of training, and lets practitioners simply focus on everyday movements, which are less taxing on the body and therefore prevents injuries and burnouts.

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Better posture and balance

Posture in our day-to-day life is something that is often overlooked, underestimated, and uncorrected. This can lead to several complications in later life, or even in the present. Thankfully, however, you can count on functional training to sort this out as well, as its exercises targets multiple muscles, all at once. This in turn improves posture and balance in your daily grind, helping you smooth out any kinks effectively.

Reduced risk of injury

Functional training by its very nature, targets the use of groups of muscles, all of which work together to perform a specific task or movement. In this way, it helps strengthen the muscles groups as well as the surrounding ligaments which help perform these tasks, while also preventing injuries and long term damage. When you compare this to other normal exercises which only focus on just one movement or muscle, you can clearly see the inherent benefits of following the functional fitness path.

Well, so there it is! If you weren’t as enthusiastic or even a bit bewildered at the prospect of including functional fitness before, we’re quite sure that that sentiment has vanished almost by magic. So, go ahead and get some functional fitness into your life!

Disclaimer: This post was written by our guest contributor. The content herein is owned by the blogger. Gympik is not responsible for any kind of infringement caused.