
Why do you exercise?
Maybe you want to feel better physically or mentally. Maybe you want to bulk up by building muscle or lose weight by running or jogging. At the Monon Community Center (MCC), you can do it all, and we encourage you to try different forms of exercise to discover fitness that fits you.
What is functional fitness?
The idea originally started as a physical therapy tactic to help train people with muscle imbalances. If your right side is stronger than your left side, then you’re always going to overcompensate with your right side. So, the question became: how do we train the two sides of our body to work together?
That’s where functional fitness comes in! Functional fitness can best be described as movement that improves your everyday life, such as bending down, pulling, and pushing. It’s a way to train all your muscles to move together in a healthy way, making it easier to do simple tasks like bending down to pick up your groceries or pushing your child on a swing. It is especially beneficial for older adults, allowing them to remain independent for longer, but anyone can benefit from functional fitness!
How do I train my body for functional fitness?
According to the MCC’s Fitness and Wellness Supervisor, Shannon Strzynski, functional fitness is an important part of your fitness regime. While it is possible to develop your functional fitness on your own, we recommend that you consult one of the MCC’s resident fitness experts, aka a personal trainer, for help! Our trainers can help access your body and current fitness regime to create a fitness plan that’s perfectly tailored to fit your needs.
Functional movements use large groups of muscles working together. If you want to start practicing functional fitness by yourself, start with some very simple body weight exercises that mimic what you do in your everyday life, such as:
- Lunges
- Lateral reach or wall reach
- Jumping jacks
- Squats
- Pull-ups
- Push-ups or plank
- Step-ups
Once you feel like you’ve perfected these body weight movements, then you can slowly start adding more weight to your exercise routine, like holding dumbbells when you do a set of squats. It’s important to incorporate weights into your functional fitness routine to mimic day-to-day movement; trying to improve how you function in your everyday life is the whole point of functional fitness.
“Try to keep your functional fitness routine fun by challenging yourself. See how fast you can do a certain exercise, add obstacles, or try doing it a slightly different way than usual,” shared Strzynski. “But the main goal of functional fitness is getting your muscles to work together in the way they were intended.”
Functional Fitness Vs. Other Types of Fitness
Now that we’ve discussed what functional fitness is and what it’s meant to accomplish, let’s discuss how it differs from other types of fitness.
- Functional fitness vs. cross-training: Cross-training involves doing different types of training, such as swimming one day and cycling the next. Cross-training has the same ideology as functional fitness in that you’re doing a lot of different things to get your muscles to move together, but the two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.
- Functional fitness vs. bodybuilding: The goal of bodybuilding is to get your physique to look a certain way by building muscle. You’ll build muscles through functional fitness, but the main purpose is to train your muscles to work together collectively.
If you’d like to learn more about exercises you can try at the Monon Community Center, read more of our fitness & wellness blogs here. If this blog made you want to try functional fitness for yourself, but you don’t know where to start, we have you covered. Click here to book an appointment with a personal trainer and start your next fitness journey!