Functional Fitness, Exercise for Everyday Life

Functional Fitness

Functional Fitness is what fitness should be about. When I was personal training at Equinox on Wall st in New York City many of my clients were wealthy in material things but were well below the poverty level in terms of their health. They took cabs every where but could not walk a flight of stairs with out taking a break. They had a summer house in the South of France but could not hold or play with their kids with out their back giving in. Health and being functionally fit is far more valuable than gold I’ve seen this first hand.

Functional Fitness is Priceless

Functional fitness is priceless. My clients would spend ridiculous amounts of money to try and gain back the health they had lost. Some did a great job, stuck to my program, worked hard and got their results. Others were just stuck in the same old start-stop cycle literally just throwing their money away. One of my client who was, a very funny out going Wall.st stock broker, who wrote a book of rebuttals for every possible reason a person had for not wanting to buy stocks from him asked me,

” Spending hours in the gym is stupid and is a waste of time. All those hours you are trying to add to your life by going to the gym are just wasted in the gym so why should I keep coming to the gym?”
I thought for a second and saw the logic that he was using.
I asked him ,”Misha  can you run to catch a bus?” (That’s not his real name I changed it to protect his privacy.)
“I don’t use the bus.” He retorted.
“Can you climb two flights of stairs with out taking a break?” I continued.
“I don’t need to, I use elevators.” He argued.
” Can you physically keep up in the bed with that 25 year old Brazilian girl even when you popped your little blue secret?”
I paused watching him as he dropped his head, fell silent and his fat little cheeks got red with introspective embarrassment.

” You come to the gym and train with me to improve your quality of life and a side effect of that is usually increased quantity of life. Functional fitness is everything especially in bed.”

Misha looked up from the floor with fire in his eyes like a young Rocky Balboa who just got a shot at the champ.
” That was the motivational speech of the year.” He blurted out, “What are you waiting for? We working out or what?!”

Functional Fitness Will Help You Everyday

Functional Fitness comes in handy with every day tasks like carrying groceries, helping your buddy move, changing a car tire, chasing down bad guys, sweeping a girl of their feet or whatever daily task you get into. Could you run to catch the bus? Take a second to read this hilarious true tale of a business man who tried but was to out of shape to catch the bus and make what definitely seemed to be an important meeting. This man could have been a hero who ran down the bus after a long chase where everyone thought he would fail. He could have step on that bus to a round of applause, made his meeting and been in the paper for something other than being the laughing stock of an entire bus. That is of course is he was functionally fit.

Keys to a Functional Work Out

Turning your work out into a functional fitness regimen is simple. It first starts with remembering that the body is a holistic organism so even if you  just do “biceps ” you are working on your forearms, fingers and even your abs depending on how heavy the weight is and what position you are in. Your program should consist of full body exercises that tax and test the body as a whole. Squats, Burpees, and dead lifts are great examples of this and will help you lose weight and strengthen your core in the process.

Use this little work out you can do in 10 minutes that will kick your ass but increase your muscular endurance and make you functionally fit.

Stand at the bottom of your block, track, basket ball court or open field. Make sure you are warmed up before you start the work out. Run in place, jump rope to get a light sweat going and then start.

Set 1 (see below for how to do a full and half Burpee)

5 Burpees

Sprint 200 feet (one 1 city block, the length of your basket ball court)

Walk back down the block quickly then start set 2

Set 2

10 Burpees

Sprint 200 feet (one 1 city block, the length of your basket ball court)

then sprint back down the block straight into the next set of Burpees

Set 3

15 Burpees

Sprint 200 feet (one 1 city block, the length of your basket ball court)

then sprint back down the block straight and you are done.

How to do a Burpee

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1 Comment
  1. […] being utilized during the exercise. It is an amazingly functional exercise that will improve your functional fitness because if deadlift is how we naturally pick up heavy objects (like say your best friends couch or […]

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