Functional Movement

FUNCTIONAL MOVEMENT

What are the benefits?

Functional training, 3D movement, movement therapy are all buzz words for the fitness industry but for the public what do these mean for your results, enjoyment and exercise adherence.

In my opinion Functional Movement

enhance all of the above. Let's break it down.

Functional movement basically is performing movements in all three planes sagittal (think squats and presses) frontal (think lateral raises and sideways movements) and traverse (which include rotation primarily at the trunk, so any swinging or twisting motions).

These combined form the basis for everyday complexes we do in getting kids out of car, putting washing on clothes lines through to sports which combine them all in a series like running cross court, lunging and swinging to hit a ball on a tennis court. So basically;

let's train smarter!

What we have seen more recently is the move to have members and clients perform more 3D movements (all planes) in a combination approach to make the body train in a more well rounded approach. This being more balanced, more challenged through various ranges of motion and arguably more functional for daily life expectations.

Our philosophy at Fitbod subscribes completely to this concept.

A Balanced approach to health, fitness and nutrition for your lifestyle and the Fitbod products are very multi plane focused with mobility, optimizing function and getting results the key areas we seek to improve. Being a more balanced mobile mover will lead to enhanced 'straight line' performance. Being fit for life not just fit for purpose.

Anecdotally we see greater adherence to class formats where a diverse exercise regime is performed which I believe is partly due to the learning effect or experiencing and practicing newer but more relative movements. I believe it is also due to reducing repetition often typical in more traditional class and training regimes along with the view that people feel and see more benefit of such 3D movements therefore seem to gain greater enjoyment from them.

Talking about performing functional movements in various class formats is a whole other topic we can discuss but the highlight here is developing culture, interaction and the use of play that functional training movements is more correlated to.