EXPERT ADVICE: Functional Training
STRUBEN'S VALLEY – Functional Training relies on movements and exercises that mimic what you do in real life.
Written by Warren McCann, owner of PowerBlast Sport Conditioning Specialists.
Functional training prepares the body for the rigors of your specific sport and its movements, as well as improving the technical and physiological aspects of how the sport or its movement is performed. All these motions involve posture, balance, stability and mobility.
Functional training can use an individual’s body weight as well as various forms of resistance, for example, medicine balls, resistance bands, dumbbells and kettle-bells.
Your body is made up of more than 600 muscles, 200 bones, hundreds of ligaments and tendons and about 72 km of nerves. All of these are interconnected to form motion. Training the body through these ranges of motion is known as functional training.
Important points:
• Functional fitness gives you the gift of perpetual readiness
• Life doesn’t happen sitting down and neither does functional training
• Functional training focuses on your body as a whole, not isolated individual parts
• Functional training tones your muscles and encourages weight loss
• Functional training is for everyone – young, old, active and inactive
The ultimate goal of functional training is to be highly functional in unpredictable situations when you have to move in any direction at a moments notice. Playing with your child, racing in from the rain while carrying groceries, reacting when your dog darts off after a cat, or playing sport are all examples of functional motion.
Training and exercise is done slowly, functionally and safely so as to , step by step, improve an individual’s ability to control and maintain the bodies ability to sustain perpetual motion, as well as perform everyday activities efficiently and effectively, with ease.
Details: Warren McCann 082 450 8220
