Functional Fitness as Part of Your Healthy Lifestyle

What is Functional Fitness?

    2022-09-2609/26/22   
Exercise  

Being able to squat or benchpress hundreds of pounds will always be impressive, but it's not the most useful skill in everyday life. This is why people need to consider functional fitness. But what is functional fitness really?

Keep reading to find out what the benefits of functional fitness are and whether you should incorporate it into your weekly workout routine.

Only 23.2% of adults aged 18 and over meet the Physical Activity Guidelines for both aerobic and muscle-strengthening activity, whereas 53.3% meet the guideline for aerobic physical activity. Creating or finding a workout routine that you enjoy and can stick to can take some trial and error. You not only need to find out what styles of exercise you enjoy but also what works best to help you live life to its fullest.

What Is Functional Fitness Really?

Functional fitness is simply a classification of training that is geared to prepare your body for real-life movements and activities. Functional training replicates common movements you might do throughout the day and prepares your muscles to work together to complete these movements. The goal of functional fitness is to help you keep living a healthier lifestyle.

Functional fitness prepares your body to execute real-life movements and activities, not just lifting a big weight while staying in a specific position. Without functional fitness, you'll find that you can lift weights at the gym with no problem, but when you try to lift a bag onto a counter, you might feel pain in your back.

Functional fitness trains you to go through life with minimal injury. The goal isn't to be extremely strong; the goal is to give your body the tools to go through life without injuring yourself unnecessarily.

Most gym movements, such as squatting, pulling, or lifting, can even feel easier if you integrate functional movements into your exercise program, as you'll have strengthened your body to bear the weight properly. You also don't need access to a gym to train your functional fitness. With the rise of virtual fitness, you can complete these exercises from the comfort of your home.

The Components of Functional Fitness

There are a few basic components when it comes to functional fitness. These include (but aren't limited to!):

By focusing on these components, you'll find that your training will start to translate to your everyday life.  

The Benefits of Functional Fitness

While the main benefit of functional fitness is to help you be a more well-rounded person that can complete day-to-day activities, there are a number of benefits when it comes to functional fitness. The major benefits are:

Improves Everyday Life

Improving the function of your body by increasing your strength, endurance, and stability will help you complete your daily duties with ease. Functional fitness also improves your quality of life due to stress relief. By being confident that your body can complete the tasks you set out because you train for everyday life, you'll quickly see improvement in your everyday life.

Greater Muscle Memory

One of the goals of exercising is to increase your muscle memory. By regularly training your functional fitness, you won't just show your body how these movements must be done; you'll also show your brain how these movements need to be handled. Once your muscles and brain recognize the movement, they will help you perform them outside the gym.

Greater Mobility

Functional fitness focuses on improving your balance, coordination, flexibility, and agility. By training your body in these components, you'll have more mobility in your everyday life.

Balance and Posture

Most people have complained about a sore neck or back due to sitting wrong. Well, since functional exercises focus on building muscle memory, you'll find that your balance and posture also improve. You'll learn how to properly distribute your weight to reduce stress on your body.

Functional Fitness Exercises to Try

While any type of exercise can be functional fitness if you pay attention to your form and muscle engagement, the most common functional fitness movements focus on mid-back stability and hip hinging.

It is important to start by warming up before you jump into the exercises to make sure your muscles are warm and alert. While you usually won't warm up before doing these movements in your daily life, since you'll be training for a while, instead of just doing one movement, you need to take the time to warm up.

Once you're warmed up, some exercises you can do to increase your functional fitness include:

  • Plank variations
  • Lunges
  • Squats
  • Leg extensions
  • Glute bridges
  • Bicep curls
  • Crunches

If you can keep your heart rate up during these exercises, they'll even contribute to your fitness goals and not just your functional fitness.

These exercises may seem simple, but if you do them consistently while keeping an eye on your form and muscle engagement, you'll be able to see an improvement in your quality of life. 

Add Functional Fitness To Your Routine

Now you no longer need to ask, "what is functional fitness?". This form of exercise prepares your body for real-life movements and activities to help you live life to the fullest. If you realize you're struggling to complete everyday movements, you should consider adding functional fitness exercises to your weekly workout routine as soon as possible.

If you're looking for supplements to help you on your functional fitness journey, please contact SupplementRelief.com today! We promote a healthy lifestyle with an emphasis on whole-food nutrition, stress management, exercise, and the use of high-quality supplements.

headshot of Jay Todtenbier 2018
Author

Jay Todtenbier is an original founder of SupplementRelief.com in 2010 and has operated the business ever since. He is also a tennis instructor and gospel musician. Formerly he spent 25 years in business development, technology and marketing with startups and major corporations having gone through the tech boom in Silicon Valley in the 90s. He became passionate about, and began studying and practicing Wellness as a Lifestyle after experiencing chronic, personal health challenges including depression, auto-immune disorders, and being overweight that impacted his ability to live a healthy, vibrant life. Since then, he has been an advocate for healthier living encouraging others to live better through making small, gradual changes to lifestyle behaviors relating to whole-foods nutrition, stress management, reasonable exercise, proper sleep, and the use of targeted, high-quality supplements.

Learn more about Jay Todtenbier.

  Related Content

We encourage you to take advantage of these FREE Wellness Resources on our website.


compass with the needle pointing toward the word exercise

10 Fun Facts About Exercise That'll Get You Moving

Understanding the benefits of exercising can help motivate you to start working out more. Want to know more about how exercise can improve your life?

Then read on to find out ten amazing fitness facts that will get you moving!


active senior man exercising at home with balance ball and hand dumbbells

A Stay at Home Wellness Guide: Exercise

Physical activity is a great way to facilitate better health and reduce stress. While we are spending more time at home, consider these suggestions to alter activities you are likely already doing, to provide more movement in your daily routines.


balance ball, dumbbells, rope, medicine ball and other fitness equipment

Affordable Home Fitness Equipment and Exercises for Adults

The benefits of regular exercise are endless. Not only does it keep us physically healthy, but it also impacts our mental health. In addition, exercise is proven to reduce our risk of developing chronic illnesses and diseases such as diabetes and dementia.


globe depicting social connections between people of different ages and ethnicities

How to Find Healthy Social Activities in Your Local Community

Social activities and meeting people are good for our mental and physical health. They provide an opportunity to interact with others intellectually, emotionally, and may even involve physical exercise. Consider these options for finding the best events and activities in your local community, so you never miss out.


African American woman with idea holding a lightbulb

Mental Fitness as Part of Your Healthy Lifestyle

Cognitive decline will happen to everyone as they get older. It involves thinking and processing information at a slower pace, moving slower, remembering less information, and having a difficult time putting together sentences.


an aged woman stretches outdoors

Tip 7- Let's Get Physical

Time to get physical! Your body needs to move, even if it's just a little bit! Learn more in part seven of this blog series entitled Seven Tips For Balanced Living.


workout dumbbell on living room floor with man looking at fitness app on phone

Virtual Fitness: Why It's Popular and Here To Stay

If the pandemic has done one good thing for us, it's that more people now understand the value of exercise. Exercise doesn't have to mean going to the gym before work every day. Sometimes, you can get the same structure, level of attention, and motivation as you would in the gym - but in the comfort of your own home.


an assortment of healthy functional foods for a balanced diet

What Are Functional Foods?

Have you ever wondered how you can enrich your diet further than getting the basic nutrients and energy you need? Then perhaps you should add some functional foods to your daily diet.


functional medicine healthcare provider consulting with a client

What Is Functional Medicine?

The human body is an incredibly complex system and we have come so far in how we understand what it does. There are numerous ways of thinking, ideologies, and theories that have merged from the medical field. Just as different as those theories, what is even more different is each person's need when it comes to health and wellness. There is no one size fits all approach. That's where functional medicine comes into play. Read on to learn everything you need to know about functional medicine so you can make the best decision for your health!


young girl inactive looking extremely bored

What's a Sedentary Lifestyle? The Risks Plus the Benefits of Exercise

Are you living a sedentary lifestyle? Many of us are. We don't move our bodies as much as we used to. Here's why a sedentary lifestyle can be bad for your health and simple, positive lifestyle changes to help improve your life.

  • Blog Post

    Only 23.2% of adults aged 18 and over meet the Physical Activity Guidelines for both aerobic and muscle-strengthening activity, whereas 53.3% meet the guideline for aerobic physical activity. Creating or finding a workout routine that you enjoy and can stick to can take some trial and error. You not only need to find out what styles of exercise you enjoy but also what works best to help you live life to its fullest.

    What Is Functional Fitness Really?

    Functional fitness is simply a classification of training that is geared to prepare your body for real-life movements and activities. Functional training replicates common movements you might do throughout the day and prepares your muscles to work together to complete these movements. The goal of functional fitness is to help you keep living a healthier lifestyle.

    Functional fitness prepares your body to execute real-life movements and activities, not just lifting a big weight while staying in a specific position. Without functional fitness, you'll find that you can lift weights at the gym with no problem, but when you try to lift a bag onto a counter, you might feel pain in your back.

    Functional fitness trains you to go through life with minimal injury. The goal isn't to be extremely strong; the goal is to give your body the tools to go through life without injuring yourself unnecessarily.

    Most gym movements, such as squatting, pulling, or lifting, can even feel easier if you integrate functional movements into your exercise program, as you'll have strengthened your body to bear the weight properly. You also don't need access to a gym to train your functional fitness. With the rise of virtual fitness, you can complete these exercises from the comfort of your home.

    The Components of Functional Fitness

    There are a few basic components when it comes to functional fitness. These include (but aren't limited to!):

    By focusing on these components, you'll find that your training will start to translate to your everyday life.  

    The Benefits of Functional Fitness

    While the main benefit of functional fitness is to help you be a more well-rounded person that can complete day-to-day activities, there are a number of benefits when it comes to functional fitness. The major benefits are:

    Improves Everyday Life

    Improving the function of your body by increasing your strength, endurance, and stability will help you complete your daily duties with ease. Functional fitness also improves your quality of life due to stress relief. By being confident that your body can complete the tasks you set out because you train for everyday life, you'll quickly see improvement in your everyday life.

    Greater Muscle Memory

    One of the goals of exercising is to increase your muscle memory. By regularly training your functional fitness, you won't just show your body how these movements must be done; you'll also show your brain how these movements need to be handled. Once your muscles and brain recognize the movement, they will help you perform them outside the gym.

    Greater Mobility

    Functional fitness focuses on improving your balance, coordination, flexibility, and agility. By training your body in these components, you'll have more mobility in your everyday life.

    Balance and Posture

    Most people have complained about a sore neck or back due to sitting wrong. Well, since functional exercises focus on building muscle memory, you'll find that your balance and posture also improve. You'll learn how to properly distribute your weight to reduce stress on your body.

    Functional Fitness Exercises to Try

    While any type of exercise can be functional fitness if you pay attention to your form and muscle engagement, the most common functional fitness movements focus on mid-back stability and hip hinging.

    It is important to start by warming up before you jump into the exercises to make sure your muscles are warm and alert. While you usually won't warm up before doing these movements in your daily life, since you'll be training for a while, instead of just doing one movement, you need to take the time to warm up.

    Once you're warmed up, some exercises you can do to increase your functional fitness include:

    • Plank variations
    • Lunges
    • Squats
    • Leg extensions
    • Glute bridges
    • Bicep curls
    • Crunches

    If you can keep your heart rate up during these exercises, they'll even contribute to your fitness goals and not just your functional fitness.

    These exercises may seem simple, but if you do them consistently while keeping an eye on your form and muscle engagement, you'll be able to see an improvement in your quality of life. 

    Add Functional Fitness To Your Routine

    Now you no longer need to ask, "what is functional fitness?". This form of exercise prepares your body for real-life movements and activities to help you live life to the fullest. If you realize you're struggling to complete everyday movements, you should consider adding functional fitness exercises to your weekly workout routine as soon as possible.

    If you're looking for supplements to help you on your functional fitness journey, please contact SupplementRelief.com today! We promote a healthy lifestyle with an emphasis on whole-food nutrition, stress management, exercise, and the use of high-quality supplements.

    headshot of Jay Todtenbier 2018
    Author

    Jay Todtenbier is an original founder of SupplementRelief.com in 2010 and has operated the business ever since. He is also a tennis instructor and gospel musician. Formerly he spent 25 years in business development, technology and marketing with startups and major corporations having gone through the tech boom in Silicon Valley in the 90s. He became passionate about, and began studying and practicing Wellness as a Lifestyle after experiencing chronic, personal health challenges including depression, auto-immune disorders, and being overweight that impacted his ability to live a healthy, vibrant life. Since then, he has been an advocate for healthier living encouraging others to live better through making small, gradual changes to lifestyle behaviors relating to whole-foods nutrition, stress management, reasonable exercise, proper sleep, and the use of targeted, high-quality supplements.

    Learn more about Jay Todtenbier.

  • Related Content

      Related Content

    We encourage you to take advantage of these FREE Wellness Resources on our website.


    compass with the needle pointing toward the word exercise

    10 Fun Facts About Exercise That'll Get You Moving

    Understanding the benefits of exercising can help motivate you to start working out more. Want to know more about how exercise can improve your life?

    Then read on to find out ten amazing fitness facts that will get you moving!


    active senior man exercising at home with balance ball and hand dumbbells

    A Stay at Home Wellness Guide: Exercise

    Physical activity is a great way to facilitate better health and reduce stress. While we are spending more time at home, consider these suggestions to alter activities you are likely already doing, to provide more movement in your daily routines.


    balance ball, dumbbells, rope, medicine ball and other fitness equipment

    Affordable Home Fitness Equipment and Exercises for Adults

    The benefits of regular exercise are endless. Not only does it keep us physically healthy, but it also impacts our mental health. In addition, exercise is proven to reduce our risk of developing chronic illnesses and diseases such as diabetes and dementia.


    globe depicting social connections between people of different ages and ethnicities

    How to Find Healthy Social Activities in Your Local Community

    Social activities and meeting people are good for our mental and physical health. They provide an opportunity to interact with others intellectually, emotionally, and may even involve physical exercise. Consider these options for finding the best events and activities in your local community, so you never miss out.


    African American woman with idea holding a lightbulb

    Mental Fitness as Part of Your Healthy Lifestyle

    Cognitive decline will happen to everyone as they get older. It involves thinking and processing information at a slower pace, moving slower, remembering less information, and having a difficult time putting together sentences.


    an aged woman stretches outdoors

    Tip 7- Let's Get Physical

    Time to get physical! Your body needs to move, even if it's just a little bit! Learn more in part seven of this blog series entitled Seven Tips For Balanced Living.


    workout dumbbell on living room floor with man looking at fitness app on phone

    Virtual Fitness: Why It's Popular and Here To Stay

    If the pandemic has done one good thing for us, it's that more people now understand the value of exercise. Exercise doesn't have to mean going to the gym before work every day. Sometimes, you can get the same structure, level of attention, and motivation as you would in the gym - but in the comfort of your own home.


    an assortment of healthy functional foods for a balanced diet

    What Are Functional Foods?

    Have you ever wondered how you can enrich your diet further than getting the basic nutrients and energy you need? Then perhaps you should add some functional foods to your daily diet.


    functional medicine healthcare provider consulting with a client

    What Is Functional Medicine?

    The human body is an incredibly complex system and we have come so far in how we understand what it does. There are numerous ways of thinking, ideologies, and theories that have merged from the medical field. Just as different as those theories, what is even more different is each person's need when it comes to health and wellness. There is no one size fits all approach. That's where functional medicine comes into play. Read on to learn everything you need to know about functional medicine so you can make the best decision for your health!


    young girl inactive looking extremely bored

    What's a Sedentary Lifestyle? The Risks Plus the Benefits of Exercise

    Are you living a sedentary lifestyle? Many of us are. We don't move our bodies as much as we used to. Here's why a sedentary lifestyle can be bad for your health and simple, positive lifestyle changes to help improve your life.


The information, knowledge, and experience shared on this website is the opinion of SupplementRelief.com. This site and its content is intended to enhance your knowledge base as YOU MAKE YOUR OWN HEALTHCARE DECISIONS in partnership with your qualified health professional. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Any products referred to are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

comments for discussion forum
Discussion Forum

Ask questions. Share your thoughts.  Note that we cannot answer questions relating to specific medical conditions - please refer those to your qualified healthcare provider. Post a new Comment or Reply to an existing one.

Discussion Forum

Share your thoughts.  Post a new Comment or Reply to an existing one.

Post Comment
 Discussion Forum Help

Comments are displayed in order of the last one posted so the most recent Comment is at the top and older Comments are towards the bottom. Replies within a Comment are displayed in reverse order with the oldest Reply at the top and the most recent one at the bottom.

Each post identifies who made the post and the date and time the post was made.

Mouse over the icons for tooltips that explain what the data means.

If you see this icon you can attach an Audio file to your post.

If you see this icon you can attach a Document file to your post.

If you see this icon you can attach an Image file to your post.

If you see this icon you can attach a Video file to your post.

You will see the Ban icon (Report Post as SPAM) immediately following the Timestamp of the post. Click this icon if you feel strongly that the content posted is not appropriate and should be reviewed by the Forum Moderator. You will be provided with a confirmation dialog to be sure you wish to submit this post for review. If submitted, the Forum Moderator will be notified to review the post and will determine what type of action to take.

Click in the upper right corner of this Help modal or anywhere on the web page outside of the modal to exit Help.

×
Blog Post Page Help ×
  

* Disclaimer: This page is available exclusively for SupplementRelief.com clients. None of the information on this website is intended to replace your relationship with your healthcare provider(s). Nothing should be considered medical advice. The information, knowledge, and experience shared on this website is the opinion of SupplementRelief.com. This site and its content is intended to enhance your knowledge base as YOU MAKE YOUR OWN HEALTHCARE DECISIONS in partnership with your qualified health professional.

* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products and services are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

* There is NO GUARANTEE OF SPECIFIC RESULTS for the products or services offered and the RESULTS CAN VARY for each individual.

FirstFitness Nutrition and NuMedica may be promoted and sold on the internet ONLY by Authorized Resellers who have been approved by, and have registered their website domain with these companies. They strictly prohibit, and actively monitor, the UNAUTHORIZED SALE or RESALE of their products in ALL online public shopping portals including Amazon, eBay, and others and into other countries. All products purchased in SupplementRelief.com are for PERSONAL USE ONLY and CANNOT BE RESOLD to others. Please report violations of Reseller Policy directly to FirstFitness Nutrition at 800.621.4348 and to NuMedica at 800.869.8100.

The content and photographs on this website are copyrighted or Licensed Material and may not be downloaded for other than personal use. Republication, retransmission, reproduction or any other use of the content or photographs is prohibited. ©2010-2023 SupplementRelief.com.