Functional training is a full-body workout that involves exercising your muscles in the exact same way you would do so in everyday life. It is the kind of routine that is meant to improve the way you perform daily activities like standing up out of bed, lifting a child or even reaching for an item placed on a shelf that is out of reach. Not only does it help improve your performance of everyday movements, but it also improves your quality of life.
Functional training mainly focuses on:
- How to use the weight of your own body and stability, typically without weights.
- How to engage with several muscle groups using one exercise or movement.
- How to strengthen your body to perform better movements that can be applied in real life.
Let’s look into some of the other benefits of functional training.
- You Can Use Your Body More Efficiently
To reiterate, functional training allows athletes and performers to function more efficiently. Just think about how you normally use your body in your everyday life or during sport. You usually don’t perform a lot of movements that involve just one muscle. However, the techniques used are not separate exercises like a bicep curl where you’ll only need to be focusing on your arm muscles. For instance, when you’re doing a plank exercise, you’re making your abs and core, glutes, legs, and arms the focus. As a result, your overall strength will be improved is less time and your body’s ability to work more effectively will also be enhanced.
- Improves Muscle Memory
Fitness coach Gavin Smith says that one of the best benefits of functional training is that it improves one’s muscle memory. He explains that the more your body performs a certain exercise or movement, the more responsive and faster your body will be able to repeat those movements later on. This is especially helpful for sports-based exercises. So you see with functional exercising, you’re not just building core strength and muscle, but are also letting your brain work out too, effectively boosting its memory capability.
- Enhances Agility, Balance, and Coordination
Functional training enables you to use your own bodyweight to perform a variety of movements. And since you’re outside the gym and have no machines to work with, you’ll have to instead, rely on your balance while also using movements to synchronize with your body. Your body will be more stable as a result as it works against external elements. For instance, a professional soccer player utilizes astute agility, balance, and coordination to not just control the ball with their feet, but also pass and run past members of the opposing team while also dealing with uneven surfaces. An elderly person would certainly reduce their chances of falls and injuries with proper coordination and balance. This is also the key to a better quality of life.
- Activates Fat Burning
Maintaining a healthy and balanced diet may be pivotal for weight loss, but when it includes functional training, you’ll witness even better results. Functional training will let you burn fat and even improve various aspects like boost your metabolism and resistance.
- Aids in Joint Pain
Functional training can work wonders for those who suffer from regular joint, muscle, and back pain. Functional fitness is meant to rejuvenate your body as it helps bridge the gap between physical therapy and personal training. Due to this, chronic neck, knee, back and joint pain are reduced significantly.
- Prevents the Risk of Injuries
Believe it or not, functional training first started out as a way to help people avoid and recover from their injuries. As we just got through with the last point, functional exercises significantly reduce joint pain and promote a better quality life in the process. The ankles and the knees are some of the most common injuries that athletes deal with because of being unable to quickly change direction and deal with joint stress. With functional training all of your usual injury prone spots will be able to handle high-impact movements more effectively.
- Improves Posture
Using several muscles at a time to improve your balance and strength, is another one of the benefits of functional training which can effectively improve your posture as a whole. This way, you won’t over-train one muscle group over the other and maintain an improper posture. A cable machine will also target certain muscles that prevent posture imbalances and pain in some of the regular areas such as shoulders, lower back and hips. The proper use of weight and strength training in functional training enables one to maintain their weight, reduce body stress and promote posture, balance and mobility. Excellent posture is the basic foundation to most things, and functional fitness boosts your body’s state of balance, enabling you to engage in daily activities with maximum potential.
- Boosts Power and Speed
Lo and behold, Another benefit of functional training is that it can help you get stronger and faster. Though you must ensure that every part of your body is in motion and training. Some of the best exercises that you can use to build power and speed include pushups, explosive lunges and jumping squats. But to really get the best out of these exercises, you have to incorporate the finest mix of balance, muscle control, agility, explosiveness and coordination. At Fit And Psyched, located in West Palm Beach we strongly believe in the benefits of functional training as well as other methods. Feel free to contact us today to set up your free consultation!
