Overhead Kettlebell Lunge

Your body performs along forward, backward, rotational and diagonal planes of movement everyday. A lack of balanced strength along these planes will result in injury-such as a twinge in your back when picking up a suitcase or indulging in your first golf game of the season.

To be fair, machines do have a place in rehab and training, when muscle isolation, or the ability to control movement, speed, direction and intensity is desired. Machines are also useful for novice exercisers who may need a very structured program of movement to build some very basic strength. Machines can also have a role in “bulking” up the body with muscle for unspecified strength. Obviously, body builders will want as much muscle as possible, and aren’t as concerned with how that muscle performs precise, athlete movements. But functional training should be the core of a fitness program for anyone who wants to develop an athletic body along with strength, skill, agility and balance for sports (and life) outside the gym.

Wellness is first and foremost a choice to assume responsibility for the quality of your life. It begins with a conscious decision to shape a healthy lifestyle. Wellness is a mindset, a predisposition to adopt a series of key principles in varied life areas that lead to high levels of well-being and life satisfaction.

A consequence of this focus is that a wellness mindset will protect you against temptations to blame someone else, make excuses, shirk accountability, or whine.

Wellness is an alternative to dependency on doctors and drugs, to complacency, to mediocrity and to self-pity, boredom and slothfulness.

Many wellness promoters, myself included, see wellness as a philosophy that embraces many principles for good health.

• If people are not active in sports or physical education (in other words doing something that challenges their stability and ability of muscles to react), they start to lose balance at the age of 15 or 16.
• After the age of 70, nearly 85% of people die from complications due to breaking their hip.

If those aren’t reason enough to incorporate core and functional training into your exercise program, perhaps learning more will convince you.

What is Functional Training?

Functional training is defined as “activity that trains movement” and includes: balance training, stabilization training, core training, and dynamic movement training. The result of functional training is agility – improved reactionary forces where your body has the ability to compensate for changes in your center of gravity and can move quickly and efficiently. In other words, if you’re falling or suddenly caught off guard, your body is trained to react quickly, meaning you are less prone to injury. Exercises promoting core strength and stability improve or maintain posture and alignment as well as challenging balance and equilibrium.

Core training is different than just training your abdominals. Although the abdominals are an important part of your core musculature, true core training is a more integrated approach; it combines strength, balance, agility, and flexibility of the muscles that control the entire trunk and spine. Regular conditioning of the core muscles is essential to prevent injuries, correct posture, and making you more efficient with all that you do.

Functional training is about QUALITY of the movement, not quantity!