The body is designed to effectively perform everyday movements. Starting from a strong core and glutes, the joints should then align the body properly and the muscles should function together efficiently to aid in preventing injury.
As children, we start growing with basic functional movement patterns. First we roll from our belly to our back and vice versa. We then progress to lifting ourselves to all fours, then we sit up, crawl, squat to standing, then we walk and eventually run and jump.
As we grow up, find a desk job and sit at a computer, in front of TV and in a car we slowly undo these movement patterns. Research by Human Kinetics and Huffington Post explains that sitting for extended periods of time can increase the risk of death by 40%. Studies also show that 62% of jobs require you to sit for nine hours or more each day.
Thankfully, due to numerous statistics like this, functional style of training is the “in thing”. Functional exercises can mimic functional movements like walking, jumping, running, lifting, pushing and pulling, useful in undoing the damage from sitting all day
Sports such as Olympic Lifting and Gymnastics, and functional classes such as CrossFit or 360Warrior involve a lot of exercises that develop strength, power, timing, body awareness, accuracy, balance, agility, flexibility and coordination in a very natural way.
