Functional fitness: The vital exercises you’re probably missing from your workout routine
To be truly fit, you must be able to flow through your activities of daily living safely, with strength, coordination, and control.
Are you functionally fit? Being in shape means more than lifting heavy things with ease or walking long distances without getting winded.
To be truly fit, you must be able to flow through your activities of daily living safely, with strength, coordination, and control. This includes common tasks, like opening a door, pushing a shopping cart, climbing a flight of stairs, squatting to sit, or bending to pick up objects.
While these activities may not seem like exercise, they require a great deal of strength and mobility, and doing them incorrectly can cause problems for your back, legs, and joints.
For example: When standing up from a seated position, people often swing their arms for momentum or push up off the armrests using their hands instead of the right way — using leg muscles to lift the body.
Over time these substitutions stress the body, making it more prone to pain and injury. And it never allows major muscle groups (like the glutes, quads, hamstrings, and core in this example), responsible for bending, to grow stronger.
The goal of functional fitness training is to prepare, protect and power your body for these real-life activities by strengthening the specific muscles that make these movements possible. Areas of focus for these workouts are squats, lunges, pushes, pulls, and rotation.
To sharpen these skills, practice the following exercises three times a week in addition to your current workout routine. You will need a sturdy chair and long resistance band.
Sit-to-stand and stand-to-sit
Begin sitting toward the edge of a sturdy seat with the feet flat on the floor, legs parallel and hip-width apart. If you need more support with balance, you can position the feet wider. Keep arms at your sides.
Without using your arms or hands for help, tighten the stomach muscles and push through the heels to stand.
When ready, slowly lower back down to a seated position, only using your legs. If this is too challenging, you can start from a higher seat base. The higher the seat, the easier this exercise will be. Repeat eight times.
Single-leg walk
Stand tall with the shoulders back, gaze forward with hands on the hips.
Take a large step forward and balance your weight between the front heel and back ball of the foot. When ready, lower down into a lunge. The front knee is over the ankle while the back is under the hips. Ideally, the legs should create two 90-degree angles.
Push through the front heel to stand, bring the feet together, and then step forward with the opposite foot. Repeat this sequence for a total of 10 repetitions (5 per side).
Push-ups
From a plank position with the hands beneath the shoulders, hips in line with the spine and feet slightly separated, slowly lower the chest down toward the floor until it hovers several inches from its surface.
Hold for a count then push through the palms to return to the starting stance. When performing this push-up, keep the elbows close to the ribs. For beginners, this same exercise can either be done from the knees (with a rolled towel or mat beneath them) or an elevated surface like a sturdy countertop.
Pull backs
Start by sitting on the floor with your long resistance band wrapped around the center of the feet. It should be even on both sides. Keep the knees slightly bent and firmly hold each end of the band.
Pull the ends of the band back until the hands graze the sides of the ribs. The elbows are parallel and pointed straight back. Squeeze the shoulder blades. Release and repeat 20 times.
Rotation
Remain on the floor and assume a side plank position. The shoulder is over the elbow, legs are stacked, and your weight is distributed between the forearm and feet.
Push through the hips to elevate them and extend the top arm straight overhead from the shoulder.
When balanced, take the upper arm and lace it through the opening created below the abdomen. Then rotate it back up toward the ceiling. When doing this, allow your gaze to follow the moving arm. Repeat 10 times then switch sides.