Almost everyone who is interested in fitness these days can be heard talking about, and seen practising functional training. Well, it’s in the hype and for a good reason. So, let’s understand what is functional training, its types and the benefits of it that make it so popular among individuals like you and me as well as fitness freaks.
What is functional training?
It is good to start with your goals when it comes to deciding what you want to do. Do you want to lose weight or gain muscle weight? Or want to improve your strength or build big muscles. It is often said that cardio is very important for losing weight but both cardio and weight lifting are important. So, what is better to do- cardio before or after weight exercises to lose weight.
Each individual performs different levels of activities in their day-to-day life. While some engage more in activities which require bending down, reaching out for objects or carrying things, athletes are mostly involved in running activities. Functional training considers the age, fitness level, goals, and physical activities of the person and designs individualised exercises to improve the daily physical activities. It strengthens the body by engaging the muscles involved in the movements of the activities, the effect of which reflects in the real-life activities you perform outside the gym.
What Are The Types Of Functional Training Exercises?
Following are the 5 types of functional training workouts people choose from depending on their fitness objectives:
Core Stabilisation:-
Torso muscles form the core of your body and stabilise the spinal column. The core is engaged during most of the tasks we perform starting from the basic ones like lifting groceries, to doing a heavy workout. Hence, core stabilisation becomes essential to enable us to perform these activities as effectively and effortlessly as possible.
Plyometrics:-
Plyometric exercises focus on increasing power, and strength and thus improving athletic performance. These exercises engage several muscles in short intervals to let them exert maximum force. Owing to this nature, it’s also called jump training.
Isometric Exercises:-
If you are looking to build muscles and strengthen the weak parts, isometric exercises are for you. They involve the contraction of muscles and are done in one position to improve the overall balance of the body.
Metabolic Training
Metabolic Training increases improves your metabolism helping your burn calories faster through high-intensity exercises that use large muscle groups. This type of functional training also benefits you by improving your cardiovascular capacity and hormone profile.
Unilateral Training:-
Some of our daily activities involve the movement of one limb at a time. Unilateral training does the same, i.e., trains one limb at one time and aims to prevent injury by increasing core strength.
What Are The Benefits Of Functional Training?
1) Strengthens Multiple Muscles Groups
One of the key benefits of functional training is that it uses all parts of your body and strengthens the full body instead of focusing on just one group of muscles. It boosts your endurance and increases muscle stability thus helping you to perform your daily activities more efficiently.
2) Increases Coordination, Agility and Balance
Several exercises in functional training train the body to support its own weight and maintain balance while also helping you increase your flexibility. This is essential to perform activities that involve a different range of movements and to prevent injuries while doing activities that demand coordination and balance. Hence, functional training proves beneficial for both athletes and aged people.
3) Relieves Joint Pain
If you suffer from chronic neck, back or joint pain, functional training can help. Most functional training exercises involve core muscles – muscles that provide support to the other parts of the body and which get used in almost every activity and thus need to be strengthened. This helps improve your posture and reduces back pain significantly. This in turn enables you to move your joints or do activities that require the movement of joints more comfortably than before.
4) Builds Strength through Weight Training
Weight training is also a part of functional training that uses gym equipment like dumbbells, barbells, and kettlebells which build muscle strength and increase your stamina. With increased stamina, you are able to perform more activities without fatigue as well as get a boost to your mental strength.
5) Reduces The Risk Of Injury
Improved posture, strengthened muscles, and increased endurance, drastically reduce the risk and impact of injuries by enabling you to cope better with physical strain. As your body gets more active, daily exertion does not affect it much. Plus, you gain strength not just in your muscles but also in the soft tissue ligaments surrounding them. Hence, becoming less vulnerable to injuries.
Conclusion
Functional training makes your everyday life easier not just by building your body strength but also by developing your mind. When you do these exercises for a while, you get to know your body, understand it better and become more responsive to its needs. It also aligns the body and mind improving the efficiency of both.
Now that you know the benefits of functional training, it’s time to see the tremendous impact on yourself.
So, what are you waiting for? Get advice from our FitNFab Personal trainer and enroll in the best gym in Bangalore to start your functional training as soon as possible and enhance the quality of your life!