Give purpose to your exercise routine through functional training
Are you guilty of cancelling your gym plans for time on the couch? Or hitting the snooze button when your morning alarm for the gym goes off? Without a firm health and fitness goal in mind – something solid to train towards – motivation can easily fall by the wayside.
So what if we told you there was something you could train for everyday? Something that would make life at home and work easier, reduce your chance of injury, and keep you smashing small goals and feeling motivated?
There is. It’s called functional training, and it’s been listed by the American College of Sports Medicine as one of the top 10 fitness trends for 2015.
Functional training is about so much more than just heading to the gym to shift a few kilos or tone up; it’s about doing exercises that will improve your quality of life and take the difficulty out of day-to-day tasks. Functional training includes actions like lifting, jumping, pulling, reaching – things you do everyday. It focusses on using these movements to improve your cardio fitness, strength, joint mobility and stability all at once.
Think about all the things you do day-to-day. If you’re a stay at home mum, your days might be filled with activities like picking up your toddler, pushing your child on a swing, and bending and reaching as you hang up endless loads of washing. And if you work in retail, there are boxes to unload and stock, product to shift around, and often ladders to climb in the storeroom.
“The benefit of functional fitness is that it helps you do your job or live your life in a better, safer way,” says Dr. Rhodes, the Director of Premier Sports Medicine in the US. “One of the reasons people often get injured is that they try to do something they’re not conditioned or prepared to do.”
And one of the great selling points of functional training is that it can be completely customised to you and your needs, whether you’re a seasoned athlete, a stay-at-home-mum, or in your golden years. In fact, Dr. Rhodes says “Functional fitness should be considered a priority for older adults.” We lose strength, elasticity and endurance as we age, and one of the best ways to reduce this loss is to engage in functional exercises that mimic daily tasks such as bending, lifting and reaching.
Fernwood now offers Functional Fit at selected Fernwood gyms so you can start training to improve your daily life.
