Tag: functional fitness

Functional Fitness

Posted on by Michael Devon

Recently, functional fitness is gaining more of a following because of the impact certain exercises have in everyday life. The word “functional” relates to the way something works or operates, so if certain exercises can help you operate better (improve your life) wouldn’t you do them? The purpose of functional fitness is to utilize special exercises that mimic real life scenarios to prepare your body for life outside of the gym (operate better). Traditional exercises train your body in the context of the gym environment so you’ll aways find yourself spending more and more time in the gym to make progress, because the exercises don’t reflect what you’d encounter in real life. If you want to use your time in the gym to improve your time outside of the gym then this is for you!

If you bust your butt in the gym and plow through an intense training session, only to spend 20 minutes icing your knees every morning then is your workout really benefiting your quality of life in the long run? Mentally, you may feel good about how hard your workout was but if you’re physically worn down after every workout and can barely climb up stairs without knee pain or your lower back always feels tight no matter how much you stretch, then I suspect that your workout isn’t benefiting your life the way you intended.

First, you should ask yourself what you want to accomplish with your workout. Do you want your workout to make you bigger, faster, and stronger? Help you lose weight? Build strength and endurance to raise your children or keep up with your grandkids? Help manage muscle or joint pain that limits your quality of life? Do you want your workout to sustain your health as you age? Once you establish why you’re working out then you have to take into consideration if you’re current workout habits are going to help you achieve what you want to accomplish.

Working out improves many aspects of your life, but mixed with the wrong intentions it may lead to other health complications. For example, if you workout so that you can lose weight and every time you exercise you do high impact moves that place wear and tear on your joints, then over time you may injure yourself and have to take a few weeks off from working out with the potential of gaining your weight back. If you workout because your doctor told you it would help decrease pain but the nagging discomfort or stabbing pain won’t go away, gets worse, or spreads, then you may be performing the wrong types of exercise for what you really want to accomplish. My point being, the way you workout should be taking you closer to your goal, not further from it.

The fitness industry does a great job advertising exercises that look cool, are hard, and make you sweat. That’s why you see most people exercising the way everybody else is, but not really knowing why they’re doing a particular exercise. Sometimes we just do an exercise for the sake of exercising, sometimes that exercise benefits your body in an applicable way and sometimes that exercise distorts your body and, if repeated enough, can lead to problems with posture and movement.

Personally, when I choose an exercise I make sure that it’s going to benefit my life outside of the gym in some way. If I constantly perform bicep curls because I think it’s going to help me pick up my dog easier then I am missing the applicable part. When I go to pick up my dog I am not just using my arms to lift her, I am engaging other muscles in my body all at once to help with the movement. If I want to function better in reality, then when I workout I should implement exercises that mimic my real life environment. If I want to pick up my dog without hurting my back, I would choose an exercise that involves me bending over and standing up while I integrate my hamstrings, glutes, core, and arms all at the same time, because that’s what my body is doing when I pick up my dog. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the way you workout is going to determine how you move in real life. Traditional exercises don’t take this into account and so what you do in the gym doesn’t improve your life the same way true functional fitness does.

If you like to go to the gym and lift weights for the sake of lifting weights then more power to you. In the same breath, if you’re looking for a workout that has a direct carry over into how well you function in real life then contact us to set up a consultation. You’ll learn how you can make the most of your workout and if your current exercise routine is really helping you or actually harming you. At SA Functional Fitness we teach exercises that get your body on the path to enjoy all life has to offer- we don’t live to workout, we workout to live.

Sitting vs Standing Exercise

Posted on by Michael Devon

There’s a lot to consider when you workout, for example, knowing why you’re performing a particular exercise and what the outcome of said exercise is, what you want to accomplish with an exercise, and how your workout is going to impact your life outside of the gym. Do your exercises align with your goals? If you want to win the Tour de France then most of your time training will most likely be spent on a bicycle but if you’re just training to be able to keep up with your kids or grandkids then spending countless hours on a stationery bike won’t benefit you the way you want it to.

We’ve all heard it, “too much of a good thing is a bad thing.” Sure, you’ll be really good at riding a bike but what about running around town with your grandkids, throwing a baseball with your friends, or being able to walk your dog. Your body will eventually mimic the patterns of your training environment, so if you’re always riding a bike then eventually your body will start to portray the hunched over posture that your body is positioned in when you ride the bike. Then your posture begins to get stuck in this position and it gets harder to function in other environments like when you want to run faster during a sports game, go hiking with your spouse, or play fetch with your dog.

To the point of this article, if you sit at work for 8 hours a day and then go to the gym and all of the exercises you do are seated, then you aren’t really changing your environment. When you sit for long periods at work, your hips are flexed, so when you go exercise at the gym and always do seated exercises, your hips are still flexed, so you’re reinforcing to your body that it’s normal to always have the hips flexed. This can cause trouble when the hips need to extend, like in active situations in everyday life. Even something as simple as standing can be difficult if the hips are chronically flexed, your body starts to get pulled forward and down into the infamous hunched over position with rounded shoulders. Now imagine trying to perform to your fullest potential if your normal body posture is hunched over contributing to impaired movement.

I’m not an advocate of isolating muscles when you exercise because it can cause a disconnection between muscles in the upper body and lower body, which has serious consequences on overall function. Every time we walk we bring one leg forward and the opposite arm comes forward as well, this is an example of how the body operates keeping the upper body and lower body connected in a functional way. However, some people may have a disconnect between their upper body and lower body. This can be seen when they take a step, the legs move forward but the arms don’t swing, instead they stay stiff at the sides of the torso. Our body is meant to work as one unit every time it functions in real life, so we should train it according to how it functions if you want it to support you as you go through life.

I’m not saying that we should only be walking and running but what I am saying is that we should pay closer attention to how we exercise our body during resistance training. Are we reinforcing the bodies natural function or are we slowly breaking down our structure of support? Instead of mindlessly lifting a weight with the use of only one muscle, try engaging as many muscles as you can with one exercise, preferably, and if your body allows, encompassing multiple planes of movement. The next time you perform a cable row, do it standing and try adding a torso rotation as you row- now your connecting your lats with your obliques. You could also try taking a step backwards when you row and rotate- now connecting the lats and obliques with your glutes. When we engage multiple muscles at once, the brain starts to get involved with our bodies movement to help coordinate the exercise properly and in the right sequence, something that isolating the muscle alone won’t capture.

At the end of the day you have to ask yourself why you’re training. Are you doing it for a particular boost somewhere in your life, whether it’s to manage knee pain, keep up with life outside of the gym, lose weight, get stronger, or walk better? Whatever it may be, your training environment has to mimic what you want to get out of it. Don’t spend 5 days a week riding a bike if you what to be able to hike longer. If you’re only riding the bike to boost your endurance, you can boost your endurance by incorporating other facets of exercise into your overall routine, without sacrificing your posture from hunching over the bike or from sitting too much.