What is Functional Fitness Training?
The End Goal: To be Extremely Fit and Healthy for an Amazing Life
The ultimate goal of functional fitness training is for your efforts in the gym to have maximal carry-over into your real life. At a minimum to be self-sufficient in life, you want to be able to pick up and carry groceries up and down stairs, walk around Disney World all day, get on and off the floor, get on and off toilets, and to be able to dress and take care of yourself. In addition to simply navigating everyday life, functional workouts are designed to maximize your capacity to enjoy any of life’s opportunities: hikes, skiing, races, sports, events, vacations, games, and anything else you are or may become interested in. At its core, functional fitness’s primary goal is to support health and fitness in the real world. By contrast, most other workout programs’ primary focus is to improve an individual sport or a hyper-specific goal with some side benefits of improving health and fitness in the real world.
For example, let’s take a look at a running program. Most running programs are designed around the sport of running a race of a particular distance, on a particular type of terrain, on a particular date. Although additional health and fitness benefits absolutely come along with running, this hyper-focus on the sport of running creates results centered around race performance. There will surely be health and general fitness side benefits, but the program is not designed to optimize those. Functional fitness training #1 priority is getting results centered around health and general fitness that can be applied across many sports and activities. To put it another way, a running program will create better runners than a functional fitness program, but those participating in a functional fitness program will not only be good runners, they will be better across the board of sports and activities than the pure runner…a jack of all trades. There’s a ton of sport-specific programs out there: powerlifting, olympic-style weightlifting, bodybuilding, bootcamps, cycling, the sport of CrossFit, Hyrox, strongman, etc. There’s no better or worse or right or wrong here, just different programs for different interests and goals and functional fitness is for those who want to maximize their options: run marathons, cycle, play sports, do obstacle course runs, hike, raft, and move heavy furniture. Functional fitness athletes may not be the best at any one of these, but they have a foundation which makes them capable in all of these areas.
With functional fitness, you’ll exercise in a way that mimics and supports the full ranges-of-motion and the required strength, endurance, stamina, power, speed, agility, balance, and coordination required for the things you want to enjoy in your life. This type of training is designed to support health and longevity in a major way and has the side benefits of great body composition…especially when paired with other MovementLink lifestyle methods.
The Workout Cycle:
Different styles of training and different body parts require different sets, reps, weights, intensities, and time domains, require different weekly frequencies, and require different recovery times. To effectively build all-around functional fitness, a combination of muscle and strength building, endurance, medium to high intensity, and HIIT (High-intensity interval training) workouts need to fit together in a way that supports one another. At MovementLink, our functional workout program is designed to optimize your results.
Day Types
Mondays:
Strength and Muscle Building with a Lower Body Focus
High-Intensity, Short-to-Medium-Length Workout with a Lower Body Focus
Tuesdays:
Short, Max Heart Rate Cardio Finish
Wednesdays:
Strength & Muscle Building with an Upper Body Focus
High-Intensity, Short-to-Medium-Length Workout with an Upper Body Focus
Thursdays:
Speed and Power with a Lower Body Focus
Medium-to-High-Intensity, Medium-to-Long-Length Workout with an Lower Body Focus
Fridays:
Cardio HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training)
Saturdays:
Medium-to-High-Intensity, Long-length Workout with a more General, Full-Body Focus
Sundays:
Medium-to-High-Intensity, Long-Length Workout with an Upper Body Focus
