Defining Functional Fitness Training

These days, people seems to be going to the gyms to have a better and healthier body, but most of them thinks that the quality of the gym they join depends more on the definition of the TV screens in the treadmills than any definition their torso might see from training correctly. In the FITNESS and LEISURE industry, far too much emphasis is being placed on the leisure rather than the fitness… but fortunately there is Functional Fitness Training.

Any training can be classed as functional depending on what you’re training for. For example if you’re job is being a runner than 3 hours of working your lower can be considered as functional training.

The goal is not to argue the indistinctiveness of the term, but rather to highlight the benefits, so for the purpose of this article functional fitness training will refer to an exercise or group of exercises that mimic, adapt and allow the improved performance of life’s daily tasks for the majority of people, with a reserve left for individual goals.

Here, a goal could be, and usually all about improving the quality of life outside the gym; that means enjoying your time for recreation and play.

Life’s daily tasks should involve movement in the 6 degrees of freedom, namely back/forward, up/down, left/right, roll, pitch, and yaw. When translated to human movement, it simply means push/pull, jump/squat, step, twist and bend. So functional training is training, which seeks to improve as many of these movements as possible through one or a sequence of exercises. Now, we have defined the meaning of functional training.

So, if there actually is functional fitness training, does this mean some training is un-functional? The answer to this is a definite yes…, and it is everything that we do.