Start with an evaluation · 2. Train in all 3 planes of movement · 4. Last year, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) surveyed some 1,800 certified personal trainers and other health professionals about the industry's top fitness trends. And functional fitness is always on the list.
Functional training is intended to help a person develop strength, balance, flexibility and coordination to make their life easier and to make moving more efficient. It is designed to be customized according to the needs of the person. Find out if your client wants to improve balance and mobility to avoid falling in the shower or if they want to perform better on the basketball court, for example. Get an idea of what their daily life is like or what sports or activities they play.
Then, perform an assessment of your physical condition to identify muscle weaknesses and imbalances, strength, balance, flexibility, range of motion, and any existing pain or injury. This will give you the opportunity to get to know your client and gather valuable information to help you design an effective functional training program. For at least 31 million people, low back pain is a chronic condition, according to the American Chiropractic Association. Back pain is also one of the most common reasons why people miss work.
Fortunately, functional training can help strengthen your back and back chain muscles and reduce the risk of injury. And that's important whether your customer is an older adult, an athlete, an office worker, or a busy parent. The first step in designing functional training tasks is to identify your needs and objectives. What are the skills, capacities, or results that you want to improve or achieve? For example, do you want to improve your balance, agility, strength, endurance, coordination, or mobility? Do you want to prevent injuries, improve your posture or reduce pain? Do you want to perform better in a specific sport, activity or occupation? Once you have a clear idea of your needs, you can select the appropriate functional training tasks that fit them.
The functional training plan consists of exercises that incorporate different types of functional movements, from joint stability and muscle strength to balance and flexibility. The exercise program includes body movements that make the tendons, joints, muscles and the body in general work again. For example, the squat is not an exercise that is only used in weightlifting competitions. It has a purpose in everyday life for movements such as sitting, standing or getting up from the floor.
That may seem easy for a healthy, functional person, but many people can't perform a full-depth squat when reaching the desired depth. The good news is that functional fitness exercises can be done at home or in the gym, during an individual workout, a personal training session or a group fitness class, simply using your own body weight or adding exercise tools, to increase intensity and challenge your body to improve and strengthen. Now in his 60s, with a hip arthroplasty, McGill is increasingly focusing on adjusting fitness regimens to improve function in an older body. The American Council on Exercise (ACE), a non-profit organization that provides fitness certification, education and training, defines functional training as “performing work against resistance in such a way that improvements in strength directly improve movement performance, so that activities of daily living are easier to perform.
Discuss your fitness goals with a personal trainer, who will help you design a functional training program to improve a specific part of the body. The equipment and tools commonly used in functional training do not include complex fitness machines, but basic exercise equipment. In the ACSM survey, coaches and other fitness professionals said that functional training is frequently included in programming for older adults. For the rest of us who aren't trying to make a living lifting the heavy iron, there's functional fitness.
Over time, fitness professionals and professional athletes adopted the philosophy of functional physical training, a form of training that helps the body to be more resistant to injury and to be more functional for daily life or sports performance. But how do you design functional training tasks that are effective, engaging and relevant to your goals? Here are some tips to help you create your own functional training program. There are a lot of functional exercises you can try, so it's no surprise that you're not sure which ones to include in your workout routine. This type of physical training isn't bad (mostly done by bodybuilders trying to increase specific muscle groups), but when it comes to everyday life, these movements or exercises won't be much help in achieving holistic health and fitness.
To get started or to learn more, check out this useful functional training video with some useful tips to get started and exercises that will help you do your own functional training at home or in the gym. .
