The rising popularity of fitness influencers and content creators has allowed audiences to better understand the nuances of fitness and workouts as they break down intimidating concepts into more digestible and exciting ideas. One popular term that is often spoken about is functional fitness, which is a method of exercising that focuses on improving everyday actions and movements.
Compared to traditional gym exercises that often focus on one muscle group, functional fitness aims to target the efficiency, strength, and balance of multiple muscle groups at once with the hopes of mimicking real-life actions as closely as possible, helping you navigate these daily tasks more effectively.
There are many benefits that can come from adding this into your fitness routine such as healthier and stronger joints, a stronger and more stable core, improved balance and coordination, and just increasing the overall functionality of your muscles. Here’s how you can start exploring it on your own!
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Compound Bodyweight Exercises
If you want to live your daily life more efficiently, working one muscle group at a time isn’t going to help you. Instead, focus on bodyweight exercises that work different parts of your body all at once. You definitely have a lot of options such as squats and lunges that work the lower part of your body along with your core, pushups and planks that engage a few muscles all over your body, or even burpees that give you the added benefit of a cardio workout.
Functional Workout Equipment
Life is rarely ever lived on a balanced and even terrain, so it’s best to replicate this as much as you can in your workouts by integrating workout tools like stability balls, resistance bands, medicine balls, and kettlebells into your routine. Not only will this help your muscles burn just a bit more, but it will also spice up your workouts and possibly simulate real-life motions more accurately.
With these tools, you can really get much more out of your workout as the added weight provides much more tension and resistance in your muscles. Motions like deadlifts, rows, and overhead presses will help you improve your overall strength and coordination.
Unilateral Movements
Unilateral exercises work one side of the body at a time as a way to address any muscle imbalances, while also improving your stability. With these movements, you’re also less likely to overdevelop one side of the body and underdevelop the other. This is something that is very common with people that work out frequently, especially when one side is much more favored over the other.
Functional Circuits
Another great perk of functional workouts is that you really get to have fun with it. One downfall that many people find with working out is that things can get fairly boring and monotonous pretty quickly, but functional circuits—a series of exercises—are a great way to keep you excited and motivated. When creating your own circuit, make sure to combine different functional movements and exercises so that you can target your entire body.
Functional exercises help bridge the gap between your workouts and everyday life as they help enhance your body’s capabilities beyond the gym, helping you enhance your physical performance while also improving your overall quality of life.
