If having a beautiful, toned body is important to you, its ability to perform should be as important. Many of us hit the gym and build up muscles that aren’t functional. They may look perfect on the beach, but is that healthy for you? Maybe you were carrying a box when you were moving and noticed that, despite being in incredible shape, you still managed to blow your back out.
Weight training alone isolates muscles. In real-life tasks, muscles work together in many different motions, doing many different tasks. When using gym equipment, you are training your body to build muscle rather than do anything with it. Functional fitness often uses free-weight movements and your own body weight. In doing so, you are using many muscles at once and actually getting a deeper, stronger, fuller workout.
Test yourself. Find out if you have good stability and balance and can manage your own body weight. Many people who can squat hundreds of pounds couldn’t do a one-legged squat or stand on one leg for very long. By doing functional fitness training, you build awareness of your body, manage your strength, and build muscles that you can use!
A Word of Caution Regarding Functional Exercises
Functional training was a trend that took exercise far off the path of reason. The industry went through a phase where any ridiculous exercise was considered functional. An exercise on one leg was considered more functional than one on two legs; an exercise on an unstable object was considered more functional than one on the stable ground. To develop proprioception (your body’s awareness in space), you were advised to close your eyes or even shake your head while performing an exercise. Pretty soon, trainers had clients balancing on a wobble board or doing a one-legged rotational squat while shaking their head. The only thing these might be good for were very stupid circus tricks. The industry is moving away from these ridiculous exercises and getting back to a variety of dynamic movements done on the stable ground to develop functional athletic traits. Some of the so-called functional exercises are still done but to a much lesser degree (maybe 5 percent of the total training program).