Is your goal to improve your health, fitness, mobility or body? Do it all by incorporating these 5 functional moves into your exercise routine!
Functional training targets multiple muscles and movement patterns with compound exercises to build strength, offering beneficial carryover into everyday life and sporting performance while also transforming your physique and enhancing your mobility.
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More functional movements
Despite these benefits, functional training is generally underutilised in conventional gyms as members focus on traditional weight training machines or follow bodybuilding programs.
Including these foundational movements in your routine is a great way to add variety to training sessions while benefiting from serious gains in strength, muscle growth and fat loss.
1. Goblet squats: This squat variation activates more muscles and improves hip mobility, which is a great combination to improve functional strength and everyday movement patterns.
2. Alternating rotational presses: Free weights offer better functional benefits than machines and this exercise adds a rotational element to improve mobility in your thoracic spine and upper torso. You will also engage and strengthen your core as you twist and press your way to stronger, more shapely shoulders.
3. Dumbbell reverse lunges off step: The unilateral loading in this exercise has important athletic crossover for any sport that involves running, developing your quads and glutes for greater knee and hip stability, reducing your injury risk, with greater force production during any activity that involves running.
4. Wrestler row: This bent-over row variation engages your back and arm muscles while also delivering anti-rotational benefits for a stronger core. It also promotes unilateral stability and forces you to brace in the hinge position, which builds functional strength.
5. Plank walkouts: Your abs do more than flex so you need to do more than just crunches and sit-ups to develop a strong and functional core. Developing trunk stability and dynamic strength with this functional movement will give you a bulletproof midsection.
Check out the full movement guide here.
