Functional Fitness Exercises for Strength | RMHP Blog

By RMHP

Functional Fitness Exercises: Staying Strong in Everyday Life

Putting the Function Back in Fitness with Functional Fitness

 

Functional fitness trains your muscles to work together, making daily tasks easier. So picking up heavy boxes, vacuuming, and playing with the kids will all be easier when you focus on strengthening your whole body.

 

Here's how functional fitness can transform your overall daily activities, plus some exercises to get you started.

 

What is functional fitness?

Think of functional fitness as a method to develop practical, useful, all-around strength that helps you in everyday situations. You’ll train your muscles to work together, rather than in isolation.

 

For example, the squat is a functional exercise. You use the same muscles to perform a squat as you do to sit down in a chair, stand up, and pick things up. Squats work your legs, but they also engage your core muscles.

 

Functional fitness may involve equipment like stability balls, kettlebells, and free weights. With our squat example, you could perform the movement with just your bodyweight, with a loaded barbell, or while holding dumbbells.

 

Benefits of functional fitness

Functional fitness can make certain tasks easier, like picking up a heavy object. But, you’ll also improve your core strength, balance, stability, and more.

 

Functional fitness exercises to try

If you’re ready to give functional fitness a try, here are some great exercises to start with:

 

• Squat to dumbbell press. Hold a dumbbell in each hand, keeping your hands at chest level. Move down into a squat, keeping your chest up, core tight, and body weight in your heels. As you come up press the dumbbells overhead.
• Turkish getup. This is an ultimate full-body exercise with several steps. Watch the video in the link. Practice without weight first to get the movements down.
• Plank with dumbbell row. Hold a dumbbell in each hand while in a plank. Shift your weight onto one hand and pull the other hand up, “rowing” the weight. Engage your core and get the full range of motion by focusing on keeping a high elbow. Repeat on the other side.
• Kettlebell swing. This is another great full-body exercise. Again, watch the video to see exactly how the movement should be performed.

 

Looking for even more functional exercises? Try this guide from GB Personal Training.