Functional Fitness: Should you be doing it?

The answer is yes if you want to be living your best life - particularly as we approach our 40's and 50's. Functional fitness exercises are designed to train and strengthen your body in the activities and movements that you need in life and will allow you to perform these everyday activities safely. 

For many of us, exercise is a way to maintain or improve our quality of life. And that's the focus of functional fitness. That is why functional fitness is so important as we get older.

Functional fitness exercises train your muscles to work together and prepare them for daily tasks by copying, practicing and performing common movements you might do at home and at work. Functional fitness tends to use muscles in the upper and lower body at the same time, employ multiple joints and engage numerous muscles and will also improve your core stability.

For example, a squat is a functional exercise because it trains the muscles used when you rise up and down from a chair or pick up low objects. By training your muscles to work the way they do in everyday tasks, you prepare your body to perform well in a variety of everyday situations.

Functional exercise training may be especially beneficial as part of a comprehensive program for older adults to improve balance, agility and muscle strength and reduce the risk of falls.

As you add more functional exercises to your workout, you should see improvements in your ability to perform your everyday activities and, thus, in your quality of life. That's quite a return on your exercise investment.