You hear the term functional fitness, but what does it mean? What are the health benefits, and how can you train for functional fitness? This article will answer all these great questions and explain them.
What is functional Fitness?
Functional fitness is an exercise that supports your everyday movements, those that are typically required to perform a lifestyle movement, such as lifting, opening, bending, etc. When combined, these movements significantly benefit your daily activities and are often overlooked in favour of aesthetic exercises that provide visual improvements.
Functional fitness is more about the strength, security and wellness of exercise, later we hear from world-renowned wellness speaker Nicky Snazell a leading Physiotherapist on her views and experiences.
How Can Functional Fitness Help?
Functional fitness can give you control and strength in your daily movements. Developing joint and muscle strength results in comfortable movements and a much lower chance of injury. Functional fitness also improves circulation, respiratory function, and hormone production, resulting in a better, stronger, and more resilient version of yourself.
If you are looking to buy functional fitness equipment, companies like Mirafit sell resistance bands, steps, hand weights, and other crucial items.
In the following section, we outline some of the top benefits of functional fitness and how it can help you.
Ten superb benefits of Functional Fitness
1 - Injury prevention
Good functional fitness can help prevent injury. It does this by assisting in several other ways, which we cover in this article. These are mainly centred on improvements in joint strength.
2 - Increased strength
Performing strengthening movements during functional exercises will increase your strength. This is done through repetition.
3 - Boosting everyday performance
Regular exercise promotes the healthy function of hormones, which provide instructions and efficiency to the body's processes. This means that regular exercise will help boost your body's performance, which is typically seen as energy, metabolism and general condition.
4 - Core strength
Due to the nature of functional exercises, one benefit directly attributable to functional fitness is improved core strength. Typically, adding weighted movement and exercise will tone and build muscle and increase core strength.
5 - Better mobility
Extending movements and other bending and lifting exercises engage many of the main muscle groups, such as the posterior chain. Building your posterior chain allows you to bend and move more freely, promoting better mobility.
6 - Flexibility
Enhanced strength and conditional gains from functional fitness exercises typically lead to improved flexibility, as they support movement capabilities.
7 - Reduces joint pain
Functional exercise can reduce joint pain because these daily movements strengthen the muscles and tendons around the joints, improving joint stability and reducing pain from movement.
8 - Builds strength
Repetition of body-weighted movements and weighted movements naturally helps to build strength as the body adapts to the increases in demand. This strength is both short-term and more endurance.
9 - Falls
One of the biggest killers in the UK is falling at home. There is a high percentage of older people who degrade and often die after a fall at home. Some recover slowly and lose any kind of condition and as a result, are never mobile again.
10 - Greater range of motion
Strengthened joints are stabilised, and muscle density and strength are improved. This provides a greater range of motion as the movement can comfortably extend beyond previous ranges. This is seen in the bending and stretching movements associated with functional fitness.
How can you train for functional fitness?
If you are training for functional fitness, this should include everyday movements such as reaching, stretching, lunging, lifting, closing, and opening. Focus on the movements that you find most helpful when performing daily tasks. For example, lunges and leg strength exercises enhance getting up from the couch.
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Final Thoughts
Functional fitness is suitable for all ages, and it is especially important for those who are over 40, where some of the hormone production starts to wain as a result.
According to Nicky Snazell, functional fitness has many benefits. Nicky, who is a Physiotherapist in Stafford and former Harley Street Consultant, Radio Personality and speaker, says
"We see many of our elderly patients forgetting functional fitness, and this can be as simple as going for a walk, stretching with a resistance band or using light hand weights to build resistance."
"Not doing enough physical exercise harms general fitness and health, which is amplified as we get older. At my clinic, we focus on wellness and maintenance to encourage patients to keep themselves well."
We hope that this has helped illustrate the importance of general exercise, which is designed to support typical movements. It can help you feel better, stay safe, and stave off some of the ailments associated with a sedentary lifestyle. Make it your mission to add some functional exercise to your week and feel the benefits over time.
