By SHANNON SKAE, health and life coach at Revive with Shan
There is a lot of hype these days over the type of exercise you should do in order to get the most benefits to build your strength and improve your health. One of the recent trends is functional fitness.
Functional fitness is about doing exercise that supports your everyday life. In other words, anything you do in a functional fitness class should help you complete everyday tasks, ward off injuries, and help you keep moving soundly and with proficiency. There are many benefits to functional fitness.
What are some of the benefits of functional fitness:
- Helps you lose weight
- Increases your energy and stamina
- Decreases anxiety, stress, and depression
- Improves your aerobic capacity
- Improves your mood
- Improves balance, flexibility, and agility
- Improves your strength
- Helps with bone density
- Improves your sleep
- Protects you from everyday injury as it teaches you how to catch yourself if you fall and how not to injure yourself while climbing stairs
- Reduces pain
- Improves your posture
- Increases your mobility and range of motion
Certain functional fitness sports, such as CrossFit, have been deemed inaccessible to the public. This is due to a misconception that they can be incredibly high intensity and injury prone. These sports are often scalable – meaning you enter at your level and ability. These types of sports only become extreme when at an elite level, and most of us will not partake in the sport in this way. When sport is played at an extreme level, the risk of injury is higher. Functional fitness is accessible to everyone, no matter your age or fitness level.
The point is that movement is very important so any sport that allows you to move is great for warding off:
- Disease
- Injury
- Weak joints
- Cardiovascular problems
- Mental health problems
- Coordination problems
Movement is important, join a sport or exercise class as soon as possible!
