Are you feeling stressed, overwhelmed, super busy, or tired in your everyday life? Who isn’t, right? Let me introduce you to functional fitness training. I promise this workout routine will become your new best friend because it targets everyday movements leaving you energized, stronger, and achieving your fitness goals!
What is Functional Fitness Training?
Functional fitness training focuses on exercises that are similar to everyday movements (opposed to targeting specific muscles). The focus on everyday movements gives your body the strength to continue to perform tasks of daily living as you age.
By emphasizing proper mechanics, you are able to create muscle memory that will be important for your entire life. Muscle memory is important so you can perform daily activities without thinking about mechanics. Functional fitness training achieves two very important things for longevity: increased strength and increased coordination.
Functional fitness training achieves two very important things for longevity: increased strength and increased coordination. Click To TweetWhy is Functional Fitness Training Important?
Functional fitness training is important because you focus on training systems of muscles together to complete daily life movements. Training your body for everyday activities increases your coordination, balance, flexibility, and overall strength.
Your body creates muscle memories from repeated actions. This muscle memory improves both your physical strength and coordination, resulting in fluid motions. Here’s an example of a functional fitness exercise:
Performing a Smart Medicine Ball Squat Press:
- Bend your knees to squat down
- Lower your back to bend over
- Brace your core and straighten your upper body as you pick up the Smart Medicine Ball
- Extend your knees while pressing the Smart Medicine Ball over your head.
This exercise is like unbagging groceries and putting an item on the top shelf of your pantry.
The squat press focuses on training multiple muscle groups in a single movement. Our daily movement involves multiple movements at one time utilizing many muscle groups.
Rarely do we find ourselves isolating single muscles to complete daily takes. By coordinating these muscle groups in your regular workout routine, you create muscle memory for the motion that will help you perform essential tasks. As we age, this is so vital.
This Holistic Approach is Essential for Long Term Health.
As we age, especially in women, our muscle tone naturally decreases. To avoid this and for best results, women need to strength train consistently 2-3 times a week. This may seem like a huge commitment, but keep reading we will make it easy!
A great benefit of strength training is it keeps your bones strong! According to the Mayo Clinic, “By stressing your bones, strength training can increase bone density and reduce the risk of osteoporosis.” I call that a win-win!
By stressing your bones, strength training can increase bone density and reduce the risk of osteoporosis. @MayoClinic Click To Tweet
Functional fitness training is a form of strength training! These exercises focus on proper mechanics to ensure you’re body is moving the way it was designed to! With an emphasis on exercises that use low weight (like the 6lb and 8lb Smart Medicine Ball) or only your body weight, there is no fear of “being bulky” like a man. On the flip side, it is possible to build larger muscles by significantly increasing the amount of weight or resistance for each exercise.
But can it relieve stress? YES!
Our bodies are designed to move! When we exercise our body releases happy chemicals called endorphins. These natural mood boosters leave us in a better mood and feeling more productive. The natural pick me up that we could all use.
How Effective is Functional Fitness Training?
Functional Fitness training can be extremely effective when performed properly and regularly. This training is an effective routine for all fitness abilities, from beginners to experts, even athletes. Our ambassadors routinely team up with us to share insights, exercises and proper form! Check out this video from Prism Fitness Ambassador, Jen Sherbinow! You can find more videos like these on our social media!
Functional fitness training is effective because it targets multiple muscle movements together. These movements easily translate to everyday activities, showing results faster than isolated movements, like the ones done on the bulky machines at the gym.
How do I Start Functional Fitness Training Today?
Functional Fitness training is a great option for beginners because you can train at home 2-3 times a week and still see BIG results. Our Smart Self-guided program takes you through a full body workout. Start with 8 reps per exercise and perform 2 -3 rounds.
Although this routine is light impact, please be sure to check with your health care provider before beginning any new fitness routines.
What’s the Best Equipment for Functional Fitness Training at Home?
At Prism Fitness we pride ourselves on creating the best equipment on the market. One of our favorites for Functional Fitness Training is the new Smart In Home Gym because it just makes sense.
What Makes it the Best?
At Prism Fitness, we specialize in Functional Fitness Training. Everything we do is to align with our goal to Make it Smart so you can Make it Happen.
What does Make it Smart mean?
We take a full 360-degree view of how our customers store and use our products. We keep your health, safety, and life in mind in every product we create.
This 360-degree view brought us to creating our new Smart In Home Gym.
Smart In Home Gym –Storage:
We knew many of our customers were feeling overwhelmed or annoyed by the pile of newly purchased home fitness equipment on the floor. Maybe it’s the stability ball rolling across the living room or the mess of resistance bands under the coffee table. Our solution is a sleek home gym storage solution with a small footprint that also features all of the most important elements of functional fitness training.
Smart In Home Gym –Use of Products:
We’ve all done it, haven’t we? We get super excited about a trendy piece of fitness equipment. Then, we use it a few times and the novelty wears off only for it to end up forgotten in the basement or closet, never to be seen again. We don’t want this to be your fitness story!
We have embedded the best exercises directly on our products for easy reference, so you know exactly how to use it. No more guessing or searching the internet to figure out what to do with it. Routine problem solved!
The result is we have created the most INNOVATIVE functional fitness training system for your home gym, whether your home gym is your living room, basement, or bedroom!
Our partners are loving this product. Here is what they have to say:
“We need to have this for our customers” – Summit Commercial Fitness
“Solid in-home solution; many commercial applications too!” – Prosource Fitness Equipment
“My team is super interested and excited about this new item.” – Precor Commercial Fitness
“Great drop-ship option for our customers.” – Fitter International
“I’d love to get one for our floor.” – Spokane Exercise Equipment
“It looks really neat!” – Nova Fitness Equipment
What are the Benefits of Using Prism Fitness Smart In Home Gym for Functional Fitness Training?
This Smart In Home Gym is the best option for functional fitness training because we have included ALL THE STAPLES of a functional fitness workout: strength, balance, flexibility, and recovery.
We’ve selected these vital functional fitness training pieces so your home gym can continue your fitness journey for many years. These functional fitness training staples included in the Smart In Home Gym are:
- Strength = 2 Smart Medicine Balls, 1 Smart Door Anchor & 3 Smart Guard Sleeved Tubing
- Balance = 1 Smart Stability Ball
- Flexibility = One Smart Mat (plus comfort!)
- Recovery = 1 Smart Recovery Foam Roller
Why is strength training an absolute must?
Muscles have a pretty simple motto: use it or lose it.
If you do not consistently strength train, your body will naturally lose muscle mass. Strength is so important in many aspects of our lives, like making the one trip wonder of groceries from the car to the kitchen and being able to play with the kids.
The more muscle maintained in your body, the easier it is to achieve these everyday activities. Plus as an added bonus, muscle burns calories, so maintaining a higher muscle mass causes your body to burn more calories at rest (sleeping, sitting, etc.)
Here is an awesome article where we dive even deeper into the benefits of Strength Training: Why Strength Exercise is Important.
Why do you need good balance?
Balance is used in everything we do, whether we are simply standing and talking to a friend or playing hopscotch with the kids. Good balance is typically the result of a strong core (no you don’t need a visible 6-pack to have a strong core!).
The main benefit of good balance is you don’t have to worry about falling. According to the National Council on Aging, “Falls are the leading cause of fatal injury and the most common cause of nonfatal trauma-related hospital admissions among older adults”.
No matter how old you are, 20-100, working on balance is going to strongly negate the risks of falls. Remember falling is not a normal part of aging!
Want to learn more about building balance? Check out this article: Why Balance Training is Important.
Why should you work on flexibility?
Flexibility is extremely important for joint health. Having a full range of motion allows you to do many common everyday tasks like being able to comfortably sit on the floor and play with the kids or lift your leg over your bike.
Want to learn more about Flexibility? Read our article Why Flexibility Exercise is Important.
Why is recovery so vital?
Recovery is when the magic happens! Recovery is the time between workouts when your body rebuilds the muscles broken down during exercise. This rebuilding process is what makes you stronger!
Recovery and rest are just as important as getting in your workout. If you skip your recovery day, you will be more likely to become injured because your body hasn’t fully healed from the previous workout.
Learn more about how to recover here: Rest and Recovery Sessions are key to a Successful Fitness Routine
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Workouts to Try at Home
We’ve gone through a lot of reasons to make functional fitness training your primary form of exercise so here is a functional fitness workout to get you started:
Warm-Up:
30-45 Seconds each
High Knees, Butt Kickers, Arm Circles, Lat Jacks, Bodyweight Squats
Exercises:
Squat Press
6lb Smart Med Ball
3 sets, 8-12 reps
Sleeved Tubing Row
Medium Resistance (Red)
2 sets, 8-12 reps
Chest Press
Sleeved Tubing, Medium Resistance (Red) with Door Anchor
2 sets, 8-12 reps
Crunch
Sit-ups on Smart Stability Ball
3 sets,10-15 reps
Cooldown:
Stretching on Smart Mat
Recovery:
Smart Foam Recovery Roller for relaxing after a workout.
Rest about 1 minute between sets. Complete all sets before moving on to the next exercise. Remember to listen to your body! If you need a little more time between sets or exercises, take it! But don’t skimp on the rest between sets.
We would love to hear from you. Let us know in the comments or find us on one of our Social Media pages and let us know how your fitness routine is going. Do you need more tips or help on how to use your equipment, then stop by Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, and let’s chat.
Disclaimer:
We are fitness experts but we are not your doctor. We recommend checking with your doctor before starting any new training programs.
