Functional fitness is an important exercise that you need to be incorporating into your workout sessions; it’s about training the body to be ready for real-life situations. Let’s assume that you had a great workout session yesterday at the gym and you bench pressed more weight than you have ever tried.

Today, you try carrying a 70-pound suitcase down the stairs, and you hurt your back, what might have happened? The basis is that you might not be paying attention to the nitty-gritty details of functional fitness. The chances are that you might be fit, toned, and ready to pull a lot of weight on the rowing machine, but are you prepared to pick up your kid from the car seat?

When we talk of functional exercises and functional fitness, these routine builds the body for real-life activities; not just handling weights in the posture that the gym machines offer.

Ensuring that muscles work together

The usual weight training exercises do not teach muscles groups to work together. When it comes to functional fitness, the integration of the muscle groups is paramount. It entails teaching the muscle groups to work in harmony rather than independently. Let’s look at an example. Back to our earlier exercise, think of working on a bent-over row, but not the one that uses a machine.

Sit on a bench as you hold some weights in your hands. Allow the hands to hang straight down. Pull the weight up while your elbows point towards the ceiling and finish the cycle with the upper arm parallel to the ground.

This is an exercise that will work on your arms, shoulders, and back as it works the entire body. You can compare this exercise or cycle to a carpenter who is bending to pick a piece of wood, a mechanic adjusting a car engine, or a nurse transferring a patient from one bed to the other.

If you compare this exercise with the seated row where you sit in a chair with your chest pressing hard against some pads as you pull levers back, the chances are that you will be strengthening some muscles. Dr. Summit Shah states that this exercise is not activating the stabilizers of your shoulders, arms or even core muscles because the machines are doing that work.

In functional fitness, you will spend most of your time standing to support your weight as you exercise.

Balance and control your body

As you start doing functional fitness, you first need to forget about the weights. For most people, it is hard to control their weight; it becomes even hard to squat using one leg without falling. Try it and see if you can.

These kinds of individuals lie down to push 500 pounds on a leg-press machine, but they have a tough time doing a one-legged squat because the leg muscles are not working together. That is one reason why Dr. Summit Shah gets complaints from patients that reaching for something high up in the cabinet causes a lot of pain.

For starters, you need to be able to control your own body and balance on its weight. You can do this by starting with simple body movements like balance exercises or a one-legged squat. Once you learn how to balance your body weight, you can now work with some weights.

You can also use tools like the “wobble board” that promote functional exercises to strengthen the core to keep you balanced as you lift weights.

Form comes before function

So, does it mean that you need to abandon the conventional weight training exercises for a regimen that is centered on balance and free weights? Not really. It is hard for someone who is used to working with machines to get used to functional exercises because it demands more of you. It is hard to use the same intensity used in machine training for functional exercises. To help you transition, look for a trainer who understands functional exercises; start slow as you progress.