Functional fitness is not a new concept, although it is on the rise with trending fitness training methods.  In fact, it was listed as one of the top 10 fitness trends for 2018 in Men’s Health Magazine.  In its true sense, functional fitness is simply doing physical training in a way that supports your ability to do daily activities (e.g. taking a shower, tying your shoes, getting groceries, etc.). Seems like a good thing to do right?  Of course it is, and this should always be one of the first concerns in any training regimen.

Often times functional training involves doing exercises in a three-dimensional multi-movement plane. In other words, doing exercises by utilizing multiple joints and/or body parts. A perfect example of this would be a single arm cable row with a high knee raise (see picture/video). These movements can be extremely beneficial but could be detrimental if you’re not careful. Let me explain…so this particular movement is beneficial in the fact that you are targeting multiple muscle groups (back, biceps, legs, core) while simultaneously working on balance. Obviously, a functional movement because we always need good balance and routinely use multiple muscle groups while doing daily activities (e.g. getting dressed in the morning). On the flip side, it could be detrimental if you’re not strong enough or don’t have good enough balance to stand on one leg. So maybe you attempt to do the exercise, but end up shifting your hips excessively to the side, which throws your spine a bit out of alignment, and then you end up recruiting different muscle groups to compensate for the imbalance which further creates more muscle imbalance.  See where the problem is here? In this instance, it would be more important to isolate and strengthen the lower body muscles first and then see if we could perform the exercise with good form.

The point of all of all this is that if you’re going to use multi-joint or dynamic and complex movements to improve your functional fitness, be sure to always execute proper form. If you can’t do the exercise without good form, then you are not ready for that exercise and/or need to lower the weight on the resistance. Otherwise, you just may be causing more harm than good.