Functional fitness training is adaptable and flexible for all fitness levels from beginners to experienced athletes.
Sometimes after putting away groceries, picking up around the house, raking leaves, or walking up the stairs, your body might feel like it’s been through a serious work out! And your body is right. All of these everyday activities call for strength, mobility and endurance.
Functional fitness is a type of exercise or training designed to mimic these real-life activities and help you improve coordination, reduce the chance of injury, build strength, and more.
Learn more about functional fitness, its benefits, and how to incorporate it into your fitness routine.
What Is Functional Fitness?
Functional fitness refers to movements and exercises that mimic everyday activities. It’s not about building the biggest muscles or losing the most fat. Instead, functional fitness focuses on multi-joint movements designed to improve the way your body functions during daily activities. Example daily activities include carrying heavy objects, walking up the stairs, and bending down to pick things up.
With functional fitness, your body builds a baseline of strength, improved mobility and greater coordination, allowing you to perform daily activities in a safe and healthy way. It includes multi-joint movements such as pushing, pulling, bending, squatting and lunging. For example, if you perform body weight squats, it may help you learn to get up from a chair without assistance. If you practice deadlifts, it may help your body learn to pick up heavy packages without back strain. If you work on lunges, you may find it easier to bend on one knee to pick something up off the floor or wipe up a spill.
What Are the Benefits?
There are many known benefits to incorporating physical activity into our lives. Wellness benefits include maintaining a healthy weight, reducing our chances for certain chronic conditions, improving our sleep, and much more. Adding functional fitness to your exercise routine can provide several similar health benefits and additional wellness benefits, including:
- Improving the way your body functions during daily activities
- Improving your balance and coordination
- Reducing the risk of injury (better coordination and balance can reduce your risk of falling, pulling a muscle, or losing your balance)
- Building strength, flexibility and endurance
- Reducing pain (functional fitness places an emphasis on building core strength, which can help to improve posture and relieve back pressure or pain)
- Preventing muscle loss associated with age
Who Should Try It?
Functional fitness training is adaptable and flexible for all fitness levels and can be tailored to your specific goals. For example, functional fitness may benefit someone whose body can’t lift heavy weights in the gym anymore, but still wants to be able to pick up their grandkids or get up and down the stairs safely. It may also benefit someone who is recently separated from Service and wants to continue to testing their physical strength by lifting and carrying sandbags, pushing weights across the floor, and more. It may help an injured Veteran who is looking to regain strength and mobility to perform everyday tasks like walking, putting away groceries, and more.
It can be done anytime, anywhere. Functional fitness exercises can be performed at home or at the gym. You can do it alone, with a group, or within a class. You can adjust for your fitness level and goals – performing exercises using just your body weight, light hand weights, heavier weights, resistance bands, and more. Remember that muscles are strong at the speed at which they train or slower so gradually increasing speed over weeks to months, working up to two seconds in each direction, may help prevent injuries from sudden movements.
To get started, consult your health care provider. Discuss any injuries or health conditions that may impact your ability to integrate functional fitness moves into your exercise routine. To get you started, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) offers handouts and videos for fitness recommendations for all ages so you have the experts guide your fitness plan.
Once you’ve consulted your health care provider, check your local community or Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) facility to see if there are any functional fitness trainings or classes available. Many gyms now have classes dedicated to functional fitness. You could also do some research online and create your own series of moves to perform. Some common examples of functional fitness moves include push-ups, lunges, step-ups, squats, deadlifts, burpees, and many more. You can tailor your workout to your specific needs and fitness goals.
Resources
For some help getting started on your fitness journey, explore the following resources:
- VA’s Whole Health Program – This program promotes the overall well-being of Veterans with personalized health plans and wellness programs that support your fitness goals. Whole Health considers a wide range of factors that go into your health, including physical fitness, nutrition, mental well-being, and more.
- VA’s Gerofit Program – This program helps older Veterans stay active by using a variety of strength and aerobic exercises, and group classes like tai chi, dancing, walking and more. It is offered in 33 VA Healthcare Systems around the nation.
- Physical Activity Guidelines – American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) provides the latest evidence-based fitness recommendations for all ages.
Consider functional fitness as an exercise routine to avoid injury and build the strength and coordination to enjoy your daily activities!