Benefit of Functional Training:
- Recover from injury/Injury recovery
- Improve daily life
- Enhance training performance
Recover from Injury
The importance of functional training in recovery from an injury is the key for a long-term benefit. A tailored program will help you to work in those specific areas responsible directly or indirectly of the pain. It is crucial to work in the right direction, addressing the real cause of the pain and targeting the right muscles, joints. Although it is not wrong a general exercise program, unfortunately most of the times it is not effective because it lacks in specificity, so patients get frustrated and eventually gives up because they cannot see results/improvements. For instance, a (chronic) shoulder pain can be caused by a lack of mobility in your upper back, in this case your shoulder joint it is constantly stressed, put it under pressure as it is for your posture on your daily routine or during exercises. In this case/scenario you won’t never fully recover until the rigidity in your thoracic spine is not addressed.
Improve Daily Life
One of the main purposes of functional training is to improve your ability to perform your everyday activities. Think of it as training for the entire movement, not just a specific muscle. When you jump, you’re not just using your leg muscles. It’s a coordinated effort between your nervous, cardiovascular, respiratory, and musculoskeletal systems that allows a fluid movement. Functional exercises shift as we pass through the stages of our life. Appropriate functional exercises for a teenager are very different from a 50-year-old, or an 80-year-old. A teenager doesn’t need to focus on getting up from a chair, but that may be a challenge for an older person. Also, a person with a disability will require a different functional focus versus someone who’s not challenged with a disability. At each life stage, the activities of daily living change, and so should the functional exercises. Functional fitness programs can benefit every person regardless of fitness level, age, exercise experience or time available for training.
Enhance Training Performance
The key to effective functional fitness training is simulating the actual activity that you’re training to improve. There should be a focus on doing similar types of contraction, speed, range of motion, and level of coordination. The closer the exercise mimics the actual activity, the more effective the training. For instance, if you’re an active person who spends a lot of time on a bike, functional training would include exercises that simulate the movements and strengthen the muscles used in biking. Functional training comprises the movement continuum, meaning that it involves all the systems that work together to perform an activity. If you want to become a stronger biker, you don’t just work on your quads, they’re only one component of the entire system recruited to pedal a bike.
What to expect
After performing a postural assessment we will discuss the findings and explain the reason of your symptoms and how I want to proceed in order to address the problem. You will receive the program in 2-3 working days after the appointment.