Five Reasons to Try Functional Training
Nerve impingement, low back, neck and knee pain, poor balance and limited mobility are all common ailments that you or someone you know might suffer from. Fortunately, I know just the training style to help tackle these problems.
Functional training was originally used in rehabilitation by therapists in order to help their patients recover from strokes, traumatic brain injuries, orthopedic procedures and others. Soon enough, fitness specialists started incorporating functional training into their routines. The end goal is to regain or improve functionality by working on the elements that are a part of it: strength, mobility, flexibility, range of motion, coordination and power. Here’s why you should give functional training a try.
Functional training reduces your chances of injury
Functional training helps prevent injuries in two ways. First, it strengthens your mobilizer and stabilizer muscles. A lot of people underestimate the importance of stabilizer muscles and end up creating muscular imbalances in the body by working out their mobilizers; to the point they significantly overpower the stabilizers. Having weak stabilizer muscles creates improper alignment and positioning. This puts a strain on joins, tendons and ligaments, structures that get easily injured with poor body mechanics. Second, it teaches your body how to move properly and efficiently. For example, one of the most common ways to injure your back is lifting heavy objects without proper form. Many people use their backs to lift the weight instead of the legs.
It is applicable to everyday life
Most functional training exercises are designed to make activities of daily living, or certain sports mechanics, a little easier to execute. Imagine you are trying to load your groceries into the car, but after a few bags, you get some pain in your back or strain your shoulder while reaching for something. Strengthening certain muscles and incorporating rotation, push and pull exercises into your workout program might be something you want to explore in order to increase functionality and become more efficient with your daily tasks.
It improves your balance
This goes back to stabilizer muscles. Having strong stabilizer muscles keeps our balance sharp; but unfortunately, as we age, we tend to lose some of that stability. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention one in four Americans aged 65+ falls each year. Every 11 seconds, an older adult is treated in the emergency room for a fall; every 19 minutes, an older adult dies from a fall. Falls are the leading cause of fatal injury and the most common cause of nonfatal trauma-related hospital admissions among older adults. Functional training could very well keep you out of the ER.
It improves your posture
In the age of technology, many of us can be found slouched over some sort of device, probably complaining of neck and back pain while we’re at it. To many of us, that chronic pain has become something normal, but unfortunately, slouching and inactivity causes important muscles like your core to fatigue and be in imbalance. The tension caused by muscular imbalance ultimately leads to poor posture. The complications of poor posture include back pain, an enlarged abdomen, spinal dysfunction and joint degeneration.
Actively working on posture in the gym by alternating push and pull exercises and strengthening your core and hip stabilizers can work miracles for your posture and help you relieve some of the pain.
Those who do functional training maintain functionality as they age
The age group that has the most to benefit from functional training is the older adults. It is no secret that a few things change as we get older. Our balance is off, our mobility and range of motion are limited due to joint pain and our muscles get weaker and lose endurance. Tasks such as getting in and out of bed might become a challenge. Getting up from a chair without pushing on the arm rests might become a workout. Training once or twice a week can help us age gracefully and maintain functional independence.
If you think you could benefit from functional training, reach out to me! I am an ACE certified Functional Training Specialist and I have experience working with a diverse list of functional needs.