Yesterday I had a great workout with one of my new clients! While we were discussing her goals, she said something really good: “ I want to have a good looking body, but I want to become strong! Until now, the way I worked out helped me achieve my goals, when it comes to appearance, but it didn’t help me become functional!”
So what does functional training mean?
Let me summarize it…
Human’s body is a kinetic chain, where each ligament and each muscle work together. The body recognizes four types of movements. It can stand and move on one leg or both legs, to push and pull, to change the level of center of balance and to make rotations.
Functional training is pretty much a combination of all the movements listed above.
The word functional means “productive”, “useful” and that is exactly what functional training is all about. Functional training can be really useful for your health because most movements include a couple muscle groups and mimic the movements from your daily life. For example lifting a box or a child. Daily we are forced to do a bunch of similar movements and a lot of us tend to injure our lower backs because of the wrong technique.
The most important thing that functional training gives us is the knowledge and posssibility to train our whole body in the way we use it during a competition or just doing our daily tasks.
Why do you train?
I am sure that everyone, including myself, train because we want to look better and be fitter- in better shape! But what does fitter mean? If we are not professional athletes and we are not preparing for a competition, what is the definition of being fit?
In my opinion, here is when functional training plays a key role. When you train in a functional way, you are preparing yourself for daily life and the challenges that life will offer you.
Being fit means to be able to climb a flight of stairs without running out of breath!
Being fit means, being able to move boxes, without injuring your lower back and then being in pain all month!
Being fit means being able to squat, to pick up something from the ground, without this leading to an injury or knee pain.
Being fit means being able to carry your own groceries, without wanting to rob a car, so you can drive them home!
Being fit means being able to go for a long walk, without asking your friends every 5 minutes if you are finally gonna sit on a bench or go for a break in a restaurant!
The idea is that for most of us, being fit means being able to handle daily tasks, which require physical activity without it causing some discomfort or being too challenging.
It means that you should train in a way that will be useful and applicable in your daily physical acivity.
You can’t imagine how often people come to me and refuse doing squats or lunges because they consider it dangerous! Let me ask you… does it seem dangerous to sit on the chair? No, it isn’t, is it? Well, squatting is a movement that to some extent resembles sitting on a chair! That means, that if you perform the movement with proper technique, it won’t hurt you and it will be useful for your daily life!
Deadlifts are dangerous for your lower back… or at least that’s what they say! 😉 I am sure that this is true if when you pick up a box, you can’t move for a week, because of the lower back pain… But if you learn the proper deadlift technique, there isn’t another movement that is more natural than it! After all every time you have to pick up something from the ground- a bag, a box, a child, you are performing a similar movement! Just think about it- if you train with weights and if you perform the movements with proper technique, this would be really useful for your daily life!
A lot of people spend countless hours in the gym, sitting on fancy machines and just wasting their precious time! Instead, you could train functional! You can use basic, compound movements, which imitate the movements you perform every single day! Thus, you will become stronger not just in the gym but you will be strong for life!
Thus, you will progress not just during the workout, but your daily tasks will look like a piece of cake!
In my opinion when you are doing something, there should make some sense!
You shouldn’t work out, because it is a trend! You shouldn’t work out because you’ve heard it is healthy!
Instead, you should work out to be stronger; to feel better all day long and to handle your daily life with ease!
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And one picture from my workout yesterday 🙂
