Functional fitness exercises are designed to train and develop your muscles to make it easier and safer to perform everyday activities It tend to use multiple joints and numerous muscles. For example, it might involve the elbows, shoulders, spine, hips, knees and ankles. This type of training, properly applied, can make everyday activities easier, help reduce your risk of injury.

Functional exercise training may be especially beneficial as part of a comprehensive program for older adults to improve balance, agility and muscle strength, and reduce the risk of falls.

Functional training is not cardio training. However, due to its holistic claim to always train several muscle chains in combination, the strain on the cardiovascular system increases and more calories are burned than with conventional training on rnachines. It has a stronger cardio component than machine training, because the focus is not only on pure muscle power. But to reduce it to cardio training is clearly wrong and simply sweeps the countless other positive aspects of strength, flexibility, coordination and general body awareness under the carpet.

In functional training, you are often brought into positions where you must actively stabilize and rnaintain your position. This is where the core stability comes into play, which is needed to keep the body in balance and to coordinate the upper and lower body with each other. In functional training, if you like, an element of chaos is deliberately added to prepare the body for the unpredictable. This improves the interaction of the individual muscles and that of the muscles and nervous system. You'll be able to move faster over uneven terrain, or simply be more explosive and agile.