Tag Archive for: Functional Fitness Exercises For Beginners

Functional Fitness

What Can Functional Fitness Do For You?

/in , ,

Functional fitness is a type of work out that concentrates specifically on training your body to cope with real-life situations using real-life body mechanics. This revolutionary technique takes fitness to a whole new level by combining multiple muscle groups and joint movements to work together rather than isolating them to function separately.

Working out on the machines is terrific; however, the machines don’t prepare you for everyday life. A patient, Laura came to me after a back injury and said, “I don’t understand, I went to the gym 3 times a week and felt much stronger, yet when I went on my trip and had to carry my suitcase by myself, I hurt my back. How could that be? That’s because exercising on a machine and performing functional exercise is quite different. Here’s why…

What is functional fitness

EXAMPLE OF FUNCTIONAL FITNESS EXERCISE:

Tricep extensions performed with dumbbells on a bench is a functional fitness exercise. A seated tricep extension performed on a machine is not. Exercises performed on either a bench or without the use of machines integrates muscles of the back, shoulders, arms, and legs to stabilize your body making the exercise dynamic, meaning your body is in motion. When comparing this dynamic exercise to an occupational therapist bending over to transfer a patient, or a person putting away groceries, they are similar because both functional activities require the person to use a variety of muscles.

However, if you do a seated tricep extension on a machine that isolates the tricep muscle, guess what is doing the work? The machine does most of the work and that movement doesn’t mimic real-life activities. Because in real life, when you’re carrying suitcases, bending over to retrieve something, reaching into your closet, you don’t just use one muscle group to perform functional activities.

That’s why you can train at the gym for months and even years on the machine and one day you go to put groceries in the car and ouch – you strained your back!

Machine-based exercises also limit your range of motion and therefore don’t allow your body full range of movement that is required of you when doing day to day activities.

In this tough economy there is a multitude of reasons for you to incorporate functional fitness into your exercise routine:

Benefits Include:

  • No expensive equipment.
  • Decrease back pain, shoulder pain, neck pain
  • Decrease risk of injury o Enhance joint mobility
  • Keeps you doing all the things you love and need to do
  • Can be done by virtually anyone, regardless of fitness level
Functional Fitness

Functional Fitness Training Helps You Lose Weight Fast

/in , ,

The true goal of fitness is to improve the health of individuals and the community. The fitness industry is just beginning to play a credible, integral role in health-care reform, including the way it serves the sedentary and/or aging population.

What is Functional Fitness?

Benefits of Functional Fitness

The term functional fitness is applied to a simple exercise plan that is designed to improve health, increase the ability to perform the activities of daily living, enhance the quality of life and prolong physical independence.

Functional fitness is everyday training for health, good posture and muscle balance. The purpose of functional fitness is to train muscles to perform their specific functions in daily activities at peak performance. A functional fitness plan includes cardiovascular and strength training to maintain a healthy body. A well designed functional fitness plan can complement the activities that a person already is doing in life, and does not require joining a workout facility.

Functional fitness helps people reach goals such as reduced blood pressure, increased range of body motion, and improved self-esteem. For sedentary individuals, achievable benefits from a functional fitness program include the ability to get up from a sofa, to carry suitcases on vacation, to climb stairs, and to reduce the pain experienced from life’s movements.

Most people shun exercise because of the amount of time they think it takes. You know it doesn’t take more than 10 minutes per day to live a healthy lifestyle.

Functional fitness programs do not waste time on exercises that are not needed. Besides some specific exercises performed to improve the specific needs, most of the exercise in a functional fitness program is moderate intensity physical activity accumulated during the day, such as walking instead of driving, physical activity instead of TV, and household tasks are done with a minimum of labor-saving devices.

A Simple Functional Fitness Routine

Let me give you a simple training routine. Everyone these days have stationary bikes. Use them in my method.

  • Fast paced cycling for 1 minute
  • Rest for 10 seconds
  • Fast paced cycling and so on.

Do this for at least 10 rounds of cycling. You’ll lose all your extra flab in this 12 minutes a day workout. This will build your cardiovascular, help you lose weight, be more active and energetic in day to day life. All you need is 12 minutes of your busy time.