Functional fitness is a term gaining momentum in the fitness world. While many focus purely on aesthetics, functional fitness is helping gym-goers and fitness enthusiasts make vast improvements in their abilities to move through life with ease. What exactly is functional fitness and why should you be including it in your regular workout routine? Read on to find out.

What comes to mind when you think of “physical fitness?” A Men’s Health cover model? Washboard abs? Huge biceps? According to the United States Centers for Disease Control, physical fitness is described as “a set of attributes a person has in regards to a person’s ability to perform physical activities that require aerobic fitness, endurance, strength, or flexibility and is determined by a combination of regular activity and genetically inherited ability.”

With that in mind, think about why you head to the gym day after day. I assume, for most, the ability to perform physical activity takes second to the improvement of physical appearance. While developing an ideal, or idealized, physique can improve your self worth, often the types of activities associated with appearance-based training do not jibe with the body’s functional capacity or natural movement patterns. These exercises can help you to look great, but looks can be deceiving. There is a high probability that all those great looking “parts” do not add up to a highly functional “whole.”

Who cares, though, right? Well, if all those “parts” do not know how to work together then you place yourself at risk of injury. I’ve witnessed far too many cases of well-built folks capable of lifting twice their body weight in the gym (spines supported, by the way), who throw out their back while getting out of the car (when the spine isn’t supported). While having a great-looking body drives most people to work out, attention to making that great body highly functional should also be a priority. After all, physical fitness is related to a person’s “ability to perform physical activities” and not how great he looks lying on the beach.

Functional fitness exercises tend to be compound movements that involve multiple joints such as your ankles, knees, hips and shoulders. These movements tend to either mimic real life activities (such as lifting a suitcase out of the trunk of a car and placing it on the ground) or have some sort of carryover into real life. Often these exercises involve the entire body, and the greater ability your body has to unify all its muscles and joints, the greater functional capacity you will have.

Today’s exercise programs often deal solely in isolation, which are movements that focus on a single muscle or muscle group. Bicep curls, tricep push-downs, lateral shoulder raises and calf raises are examples of exercises that work in isolation. These exercises can help build those muscles, but working in isolation trains those muscles to function that way. Unfortunately it is rare that those movements will translate to real life situations.

One of the most popular exercises (typically for men) is the bench press. This exercise, for some reason, has been given gold star status and provides an instant ego boost for someone who can lift a significant amount of weight. When considering functional fitness, the bench press has little to no carryover. You see, one of the greatest weaknesses with this exercise is that your spine is supported by the bench. A supported spine means that the little, but vastly important, spinal stabilizer muscles are deactivated and then become weak. Weak spinal stabilizers can lead to inadequate posture which leads to premature degeneration of the hard (vertebra, bones, etc.) and soft tissue (muscles, ligaments, tendons, invertebral discs) structures of the body.

The bench press also has little functional capacity because it is not likely you’ll be in a position where you’re pushing a lot of weight from your body while your spine is supported.

Most functional exercises require you to be standing on one leg or two. Balance and stabilization is a huge aspect of functional fitness, so it’s best to begin by learning how to manipulate your own body weight sans external resistance. Balance activities, such as a BOSU Balance Trainer squat, a one-legged squat or similar exercise, will help activate the tiny stabilizer muscles throughout the body. These types of exercises also teach your body to make minute corrections to ensure that you don’t buckle at the slightest perturbation. Once you have significant control of your body you can then progress the exercises by including dumbbells or some other form of external resistance.

When including functional exercises into your routine, you’ll also want to think of movements that integrate the entire body and require the use of multiple joints.

I’m a big fan of spending as little time in the gym as possible. I know that personal trainers should LOVE hanging out among the squat racks and pec decks, but I certainly don’t. So to maximize my time and get a great workout, I perform three full-body functional strength training workouts per week. I’m probably in the gym 45 minutes to an hour each time. The key is multi-joint movements that involve as many muscles as possible.

Even if you’re still a bit skeptical of the benefits of functional exercise, it will be worth it for you to give it a try. Try one or two exercises each time you hit the gym and you might just surprise yourself at how different – and fun – they are. And, as I’ve mentioned in previous columns, shaking up your routine is paramount to overcoming plateaus and making continued progress.