Functional Fitness: 3 Elements to Include in Your Workouts
If you find yourself constantly pulling muscles or injuring yourself after a hard session at the gym, chances are some key elements are missing from your workout routine. You may look at other athletes and question why they have such incredible endurance and agility, even when they don’t “look that strong.”
The secret key is that they train smarter, not harder. The best athletes engage in combo training for a more well-rounded approach to fitness. No more blaming your lack of progress on bad genes or not having enough time!
Build these three elements into your workouts to sky-rocket towards your goals:
Foundations
Stability
Strength
Why You Can’t Jump Straight into Heavy Lifting
Starting a new workout routine is often intimidating, but incorporating strength training is certainly worth the effort. Research shows weight training helps build muscle mass, preserve bone density, and reduce risks of diseases such as heart disease, arthritis, and diabetes.
However, strength training is only effective when done with proper form and when the correct muscles are engaged. It can be quite easy to do incorrectly and can often be the result of a lifetime of poor repetitive habits. This is why it’s crucial to ease into lifting to avoid injury.
Improper form can lead to back aches, knee pain, and a lack of arch support. While we know you may feel ambitious about jumping in, less is often more when it comes to adequate strength training. When you’re first starting, you don’t need to head straight for the equipment – body weight is likely more than enough.
Train Your Foundation
From the time we are born, we are making strides towards movement. Movement is essential for our health and well-being, particularly for cellular rejuvenation through the lymphatic system. The foundational movements that we develop as we grow help us strengthen our muscles and joints as well as stimulate the neural pathways for performing more complicated movements.
We first rock, roll, and crawl until we stand up through deep squats, holding onto stable objects as we learn to walk and then run. However, once we’ve mastered these movements, we seem to leave them in the past, forgetting how effective they are for our bodies. Only when we are overweight or leading a sedentary lifestyle that results in aches and pain do we decide to aggressively jump into high-intensity training.
We may start to lose weight, but because our nervous systems have forgotten these essential motions, we set ourselves up for injury and fatigue. Before we pick up kettlebells and barbells, we must get back to the basics and re-learn simple movements.
Build Stability
Stability is a crucial element in fitness to avoid injury. It is the foundation that often gets overlooked, especially for those just beginning their fitness journey after months, years, or even decades of sedentary living.
When it comes to exercise, many people jump straight to training the “show muscles” because they want to look better. But this is a surefire way to feel worse, not better. To bulk up or get mean and lean, you need a solid foundation with your smaller stabilizers. These keep every other part of your body steady and structurally sound during bigger movements. This will ensure your joints are protected and at less risk of injury.
Stability exercises include:
Forearm planks
Side planks
Marching hip bridges
Bird dogs
Calf raises
Cat cows
Single leg lift
Balance on a stability ball
Toe yoga & scrunches
Improve Strength
All strength starts at the core, but this doesn’t only include your “six pack.” The abdominals and obliques are certainly important components of the core, but this part of the body also includes the spinal erectors, diaphragm, trapezius, pelvic floor, and glutes. These muscles all support spinal alignment and mobility, which cascades out to the limbs, neck, and head.
Properly strengthening the body requires training your body as it was intended to move. In a lot of cases, weight machines aren’t built for this kind of musculoskeletal development. You must rely on your internal core system for support instead of external forces such as benches and backrests. Although these can be useful in some cases, avoid solely depending on them.
When you begin your strength training journey, incorporate the following movements. Don’t be afraid to tie a band around your thighs or arms if you need more support.
Squats
Lunges
Deadlifts
Pushups
Pull-ups
Presses
Bent-over row
Let's Move > Exercises is the Best Medicine
Stay Balanced with Dynamic Fitness & Rehabilitation
Movement is a crucial part of your overall health, but more than anything, we must listen to what our bodies need so we can avoid injury and call vitality into our lives. Balance in our fitness routines is necessary to move functionally and maintain balance.
Starting your fitness journey is as simple as reaching out to our team at Dynamic Fitness & Rehabilitation. Our M.A.T. experts and physical therapists will ensure you are moving well and feeling even better. Schedule your evaluation today - (813) 422-5671.