How do you move throughout your day?  Have you ever taken the time to stop and notice?  Our bodies are meant to move in a variety of motions and it is through these basic everyday movements that we are able to perform functional tasks.  These functional movements are:  walking, lunging, bending, squatting, pushing, pulling and twisting and are movements that most individuals become weak in because of the lack of mobility in our day to day lives.  As a result when we don’t exercise or move around for that matter our bodies get weaker and weaker thus resulting in an injury.  Therefore, I ask you how much of your movement throughout your day consists of the above 7 functional movements?  Below are some tips of how you can begin to pull functional exercise into your daily lifestyle and not only start to get stronger but also reduce the chance of injury and burn some calories along the way.

Before I give you your list of functional exercise tips I would like to say that for those of you who have not exercised in a very long time, do not exercise  regularly utilizing  functional exercises or are recovering from an injury please  ease into the exercises listed below slowly and in a safe manner. 

Tips for functional exercise:

• 1. Stop using machines: if you are a person who already exercises and is at the gym using machines STOP! Machines take away core stability and you cannot get dynamic with your movements you are only restricted to one movement at a time versus multiple.
• 2. Exercises to start with at home: for those of you who have not exercised in a very long you can use support such as a wall or table or countertop to help you during your squatting exercises as well as lunges.
• a. Lunges: holding onto a wall for support place right leg in front of your left and slowly drop your left knee towards the floor going as deep as you comfortably can and then rise back up. Repeat one each side.
• b. Squats: holding onto a countertop with both hands and placing a chair behind you (this will help you to keep good form) squat down as if you are going to sit in the chair (but don’t) and then rise back up and repeat.
• c. Pushing - wall push up: stand in front of a wall placing both your hands flat against the wall shoulder height in front of you. Allow your elbows to move out to the side as you bring your chest towards the wall and then push yourself away, repeat.
• d. Bending: Standing nice and tall bend down as if you are going to touch your toes and stand back up, repeat
• e. Pulling: get out that vacuum cleaner and there you have not only your pulling exercise but also your pushing.
• f. Twisting: stand in place with your arms on your hips or out at your sides and just twist from right to left.
• g. Walking: need I say more get out and walk!
• 3. Form is key! If you do not know what proper form is get yourself some literature or hire a trainer this is how injury is avoided and optimum strength is achieved.
• 4. Combining Exercises: This is for the advanced exerciser or the beginner who has a trainer: If you are that person who has an understanding of proper form and have adequate strength then you can tolerate more advanced versions of the exercises above such as a squat with a pull, lunge with a push, lunge with a twist all the more reasons not to use machines.
• 5. Tempo/speed: I see this time and time again of individuals who want to move quickly through the exercise “just to get it done”. Stop this immediately, you are setting yourself up not only for injury but you are not strengthening the muscle properly. There are different tempos/speed depending on what you are training for, make sure you have an understanding of what you trying to accomplish and have the tempo match. This is why so many people don’t see results because they are not training/stimulating the muscle appropriately.
• 6. Variety: have variety in your exercise program and allow rest to be apart of it. Variety keeps the body guessing, this is a good thing!

If you have any questions or concerns we would love to hear from you.

Lori Metroka, Nutrition & Wellness Specialist

Los Gatos personal training, San Francisco personal training, Nutrition coaching Los Gatos, Nutrition Coaching San Francisco, Corrective exercise, injury prevention, how to prevent an injury, primal movement patterns, safe exercise tips

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 14th, 2010 at 4:42 pm and is filed under Exercise Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.