What Is functional fitness?

Functional fitness is a form of exercise that emulates everyday activities, such as walking, jumping, squatting, and lifting. The main goal of practicing functional fitness is to improve your natural movement patterns and reduce the risk of injuries and chronic pain.

Functional fitness trains your muscles, tendons, and joints to work in harmony. When your whole body is working as one, you can move optimally to minimize health problems and injuries. It applies not just in the gym but in all aspects of your professional and social lives.

Functional fitness training

Functional fitness aims to follow similar movements to those that you perform in your everyday life to promote healthy muscle recruitment. It involves a variety of movements, including lifting, squatting down, reaching, twisting, turning, pulling, and pushing. These are all movement patterns that you perform on a daily basis when going about your usual activities.

For example, when you’re carrying your grocery shopping into the kitchen and putting your food away in high cupboards, you’re lifting, squatting, twisting, pulling, and reaching to perform this simple task.

Benefits of functional fitness

As you can see, functional fitness is important for your day-to-day life, not just for the gym. Everybody can benefit from incorporating functional exercises into their workout routine, whether they're a beginner to working out or an advanced lifter with years of experience in the gym.

The benefits of functional training include the following:

• Increased muscle strength and power
• Better muscle recruitment patterns
• Easier day-to-day activities
• Lower risk of injuries and chronic pain
• Better management of chronic health conditions
• Easier weight management
• Better exercise performance
• Better balance, coordination, and stability
• Better physique
• Improved muscle flexibility and joint mobility