What is Functional Fitness?

Functional fitness exercises mimic everyday activities you do at work, home, and play. Functional fitness movements prepare your joints, muscles, and body for daily activities. You get healthier and fitter. We want muscles that go, not just show.

Have you ever wondered why someone, who bench presses 500 lbs, can throw their back out while carrying a 40 lb suitcase down the stairs? I did too, and then I discovered functional fitness.

In fact, when I was 21 I was back squatting in the fashion that most body builders do, and I ruptured a disc in my lower back. It’s embarrassing for me to say this, but I was trying to do too much weight with extremely poor squatting technique. And here’s the thing, I was doing everything correct as I had read it in body building magazines and books.

Functional Fitness Made My Body Strong

Since discovering functional fitness I’ve made my lower back stronger while doing safer movements. I have no need any more to sleep with a pillow below or between my knees just to make it through the night. I have the ability to lift and carry much more weight than ever before. When I say carry weight, I’m need to clarify. It’s not barbells and dumbbells I’m carrying. Its things like my children, bags of top soil, buckets of sand, or suitcases packed for vacation.

My mother was plagued with lower back problems, as many others in my family are, but I wouldn’t settle for “that’s just the way it is.” The human body is an amazing thing, and by using functional fitness you can transform weaker areas of your body into strong, pain-free areas.

What type of things make up a functional fitness movements and workouts?

• Bodyweight exercises
• Push-ups
• Squats
• Pull-ups
• Sit-ups
• Back extensions
• Lifting weight over your head
• Carrying heavy weight
• Picking things up from the ground (safely)
• Swinging a sledge hammer
• Running barefoot
• Short sprints

There you have it, a short list of functional exercises.

Let Me Ask You A Fitness Question.

Would your daily life improve if spent 20 minutes on an elliptical machine, or would it improve more by doing pushups, squats, and a few short sprints? Yea, you’re right. The second workout would do your body best even if it’s a quick workout completed in less than 10-15 minutes.

On the elliptical you’ll get a cardio workout, and a little bit of a leg workout. But if you did pushups, squats, and few short sprints, you would be getting a cardio, strength, coordination, agility, balance workout all wrapped into 10-15 minutes. More workout in less time, wouldn’t you agree?