Daily movement plays an integral role in optimal health

Weather you are a professional athlete, want to lose weight, get stronger, improve your sport specific performance, balance and flexibility, are young, old, pregnant or just looking to improve your mood, daily exercise is beneficial for everyone. We all know we should get our recommended minimum of thirty minutes a day but for many forming a routine, setting goals and making daily exercise enjoyable can be a challenge.

Just like nutritional intake, exercise can look different for everyone. There is no one size fits all. Factors including your physiology, personal health, fitness goals and physical activity history will influence what form of exercise or physical activities will be right for you. Those who exercise daily can vouch that once you find your flow moving daily makes you feel great.

I personally enjoy, and as a exercise coach, I am an advocate of the functional training approach.

What is Functional Exercise Training?

Functional training is training with a purpose. That purpose will look different from one person to the next, an athletes training preparing for competition, compared to someone who wants to increase their longevity for example. To the masses functional training consists of exercises that helps people function optimally, to keep your body at a fitness level that maintains optimal health. This enables your muscles to help you do everyday activities safely (read injury free) and efficiently. All muscles in the body are used through movements that increase, strength, flexibility, balance and mobility with an emphases on all important core strength and stability. Exercises are based on primal patterns including squatting, lunging, pulling, pushing, carrying and twisting to help people get lean, strong and balanced. Exercise equipment, plyometrics as well as body weight exercises, yoga and mobility stretching can all be incorporated.

Why I recommend functional training

A style of exercise that can be tailored to all. Functional training is about conditioning your body to strengthen your weaknesses, weight management, create muscle balance, prevent injury, improve performance and prepare your body for specific sports as well as everyday life. You can train at home, outdoors, in a gym, in a group or even on a sailing yacht as we do.

Build Strength and Coordination:

Using compound exercises, integration of multiple muscle groups are activated and conditioned at once. This means more of a whole body work out and most exercises include multiple joints, big muscle groups and include movements that cover all 3 planes of motion (frontal, sagittal and transverse).

Improve Posture and Mobility:

Many common concerns including muscle tension, headaches, osteoarthritis, musculoskeletal injury, sleep loss, weight gain, and the list could go on are due to poor posture and joint mobility. Moving and strengthening the body in all planes of motion including bending, squatting, pushing, pulling, running, twisting (with correct form) will strengthen the muscles that hold us in great postural form. By moving through full range of motion while strengthening and lengthening muscles, joint stability and range of motion are improved. This is so important to avoid and prevent injury as well as improve quality of life.

My favorite functional training tools to use

Like I mentioned above you don’t have to use any equipment in order to exercise functionally you can use simply your own body weight with body weight exercises. However equipment can be added into your training tool box to keep things fun and fresh, challenge yourself, assist in rehabilitation and injury, for stretching, sport specific, muscle balance, core strength and more. There are loads of different pieces of equipment that can be implemented. My favourite tools are light, portable and affordable, this means your more likely use them and take them with you when travelling or have them set up in the most convenient location at home.

Suspension straps: Exercises and difficulty can be adjusted to suit all levels of ability and fitness. During exercises, stabiliser muscles are challenged to maintain joint stability as muscles work to control correct movement whilst in an unstable environment. Training under loaded instability also causes complete activation of the prime movers. Easy to set up and portable, Michael (my husband) and I even used our during ocean passages sailing at sea, creating an even more challenging stability exercise! There are many different brands available and variations, my personal pick however is Australian owned CrankIt suspension straps. Not only are they a high quality product they are created by professionals with exercise science knowledge. I am also a certified suspension instructor, I have found I get great results feed back from clients who I have incorporated suspension training into their training routine .

Fit ball: Not just a brightly coloured piece of gym equipment of ergonomic office chair. There are countless exercises that can be performed on a fit ball with a major focus on core strength and stability. Poor core strength and posterior chain stability is a number one contributor to back and hip pain sciatica. Weather your an athlete, suffering from back pain, pre and postnatal or just wanting to achieve whole body strength and tone, you can benefit from the humble fit ball. Exercises range from beginner to extremely challenging, not allowing your mind to wander off at any moment, unlike training on a weight machine or bench. I love introducing people to the fit ball, especially those who are used to lifting heavy weights, who are surprised how effective just using their own body weight can be. Both the fit ball and suspension straps are great tools to improve sports performance that require balance, co ordination, cardio fitness and power. A good example is surfing, kite boarding and stand up paddleboarding for us.

Resistance band: As the name suggests, resistance bands provide resistance to a regular body weight workout and make it extra challenging. There are huge benefits of using resistance bands for stretching, low resistance, physical therapy and for injuries. Both major and minor muscle groups are activated helping improve joint stability and improved muscle performance. As well as making body weight exercises like squats and hip raises more challenging the bands can also assist your progress with difficult exercises. For example, for those wanting to get better at pull-ups the band can be used to assist in lifting your body weight. They are light, compact can be used for whole body training and condition, stretching and rehab. A tool that everyone should have!