In my line of work as a personal trainer and manual therapist-in-training, I teach functional exercise. And I teach it to everyone, regardless of age. Keeping our bodies strong and our joints juicy are the secrets to achieving and maintaining function.
Everyone desires greater vitality and increased ease of movement whether they’re folding clothes or hiking the Sandias, traveling with loved ones or playing with their children.
Here are nine functional exercises I use to enhance the lives of my clients. Give them a go.
1. Stop doing sit-ups and crunches
Instead, practice a prone plank. Not only are the stabilizing muscles of the abdomen strengthened, the glutarals, the shoulders, and the thighs are, too, and the shoulder and the elbow gain stability. Add a side plank once a prone plank feels easier.
2. Stomp around
Seriously, stomp your feet. Lift your leg, aiming to bring the thigh parallel to the floor, then, well, stomp your foot! Each footfall should be audible. Stomping is a great way to enhance bone health. (It’s also fun!) Do 50 stomps each day.
3. Get down on the floor
And get back up again. Honestly, one of the greatest signs of vitality is moving down to and up from the floor with ease. Performing “ground-to-standing moves” strengthens the hips, legs, and core muscles. Joints get juicy doing this. That’s a good thing.
4. Pump some iron
Grab a set of dumbbells and learn how to do integrative or compound exercises. These types of exercises entail doing things like a lateral lunge followed by a biceps curl followed by a shoulder press. If possible, don’t sit down to perform your free-weight exercises.
5. Stand up and sit down. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
It’s the squat, one of our most important functional moves. This is another good exercise to create juicy joints. After all, we do squats all day long as we sit down and get up from a chair or toilet.
6. Walk like a farmer
This is great for functionality. To do it, hold one dumbbell in each hand, imagining each weight is a heavy bucket filled with liquid. Without swinging your arms (you don’t want to spill a drop) walk about for one minute.
7. Stand on one leg
You’ve heard this one before. The goal is to be able to stand on one foot for 30 seconds. Practice near a wall if you’re a beginner. Give it a try: put your hands on your hips, lift one foot off the floor a few inches but don’t let it touch your standing leg.
8. Go totally bananas
The name of this move was coined by members of my group class. Jump about seeing if you can have each foot land in a different spot. This move will look like you have gone bananas. Laugh a little, that’s also good for you.
9. Get out of your shoes
Our feet have incredible proprioception, meaning that our fascia and other connective tissue and the receptors within the soft tissue can tell us where we are in space when we go barefoot. Balance is also enhanced. So, set your feet free, often.