By Aaron Boike, B.S. Kinesiology, ACE Certified Personal Trainer
The term “functional training” gets thrown around a lot these days, and it has picked up a variety of definitions in the fitness industry. Generally speaking, functional training is defined as fitness training that prepares you for the real world; whether that be athletics, to be better at your job, or just to be able to perform your day to day tasks more easily and with less chance of injury. Training in a functional way is not only smart because it helps you be better in other parts of your life, it also typically engages more muscle groups, energy systems, and often times allows you to take advantage of fun training modalities that you might not try otherwise. Here are five easy ways to make your workouts more functional.
- Ditch the Bench – One thing my clients know is that when they come in for a workout, they are going to be on their feet, hands, butt or belly the entire time. We spend all day in a chair, which shortens the muscles of our posterior chain and hips flexors, and artificially supports the body. When you come in to work out, aim to avoid the bench and support your own bodyweight the entire time. There are creative ways to do to just about any movement without using a bench for support. Check out this video on the self supported dumbbell row for a good example.
- Get Your Core Engaged – The core provides support for just about every movement we do in daily life. From loading the washing machine to hitting a long drive down the fairway, we cannot move efficiently or effectively without a stable core. The best core movements to start with are ones that build stabilization endurance. These movements include planks, side planks, and Paloff presses. You can view all of these movements in our exercise library.
- Work on Balance – Balance often gets left out of workout routines because it is uncomfortable at first, but few things could be more important to building a functional body! Aiming for movements that put you free standing in space without support are great for building a foundation for balance. Once a solid foundation is built, get out the BOSU trainer, stability ball and TRX. These are great tools to help increase your balance and improve your mind-body awareness. Some of my favorite movements for balance include the TRX single leg movements that can be found in our exercise library.
- Master Bodyweight Movements – As a Trainer I think there is nothing more important than mastering the basic human movement patterns that make us functional for daily living and help injury proof our body. The best way to get started with these is by mastering bodyweight exercise. Bodyweight exercise is great because it always requires core engagement and helps you move better through three dimensional space. Squats, lunges, pushups, pullups, planks, and burpees are some of the best movements out there for building a functional body.
- Try Suspension Training – The Suspension Trainer is a tools that is now commonplace in the gym (the most popular suspension trainer is the TRX). Suspension training is a great training modality because it requires constant core engagement, stabilization and balance to perform movements effectively. Plus, you can seriously replace a whole rack of dumbbells with this single piece of equipment, making it one of the most versatile tools out there. You can find dozens of suspension training movements in our exercise library.