Functional Fitness Equipment

WHAT IS FUNCTIONAL FITNESS EQUIPMENT?

Functional fitness equipment is different than your regular home gym equipment. Focussing on full body workouts requires targeted gear. Functional training is a physical fitness method that emphasize how muscle groups function together during daily activities at home or office.

As we move through our daily routines, we rarely use single muscle groups without engaging other muscles. Functional fitness equipment works more than one group of muscles at once.

Functional training blends well for any group. For older adults it can prevent injury while younger people can add something new to their routine. You might be training for a marathon, or to perform better during next sports season. You can choose to maintain your fitness lever or to push to higher levels of fitness.

WHAT IS CONSIDERED FUNCTIONAL TRAINING?

Functional training exercises are typically full body workouts – certainly multiple muscles – and focus on core strength and stability. By mirroring movements from your daily life, like squatting, carrying heavy objects or reaching, increasing functional strength can assist increasing your quality of life and mitigate the risk of injury.

There are 7 functional movements that the human body performs: Push, Pull, Squat, Lunge, Rotation, Hinge and Gait. These movements stimulate all major muscle groups in your upper and lower body.

WHAT EQUIPMENT DO YOU NEED IN FUNCTIONAL TRAINING?

Once you are hooked on functional exercises that seem natural and almost primal in technique, you will want training equipment that takes these workouts to the next level.

Wether you are a beginner or an expert in functional excercises, we have outlined our top 10 best multi functional fitness training equipment list below.

Battle rope

Sandbag

Plyo box

Weightlifting belt

Suspension trainer

Slam bal

Kettle bell

Resistance bands

Balance board

Jump rope

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FUNCTIONAL TRAINING AND TRADITIONAL STRENGTH TRAINING?

Most athletes understand that it is important to build muscle strength, but they may not know that additional functional workouts to their standard training can enhance other sports performance.

Most training that is done in the weight room, does not translate to your sport because the movements are not mimicing movements on the field, court, pool or other area’s.

But functional training translates to more than other athletic activities. These excercises make daily activities like tackling a big flight of stairs or hauling in groceries easier while decreasing your chance of injuries.

Traditional strength training aims at building strength in a single muscle group at a time. An example is bicep curls with dumbells to increase upper arm strength.

Functional fitness, on the other hand, emphasizes entire body movements that activate specific muscle groups and move other muscles to mimic daily activities. An example is a jump squat, which activates about every leg muscle to lower yourself and thrust upwards into a jump while maintaning balance through the whole exercise.

The whole body training that engage multiple muscle groups at the same time also takes less time than a traditional strength workout sessions. These moves require activating your core stability, which is needed across all sports. Examples can be battle rope training, compound workouts with a weightlifting belt, dipping belt or sandbag training.

CHOOSING FUNCTIONAL TRAINING EQUIPMENT FROM NEXT ALPHA

Next Alpha has a large range of functional training equipment available. Our functional training gear is available in variety of products, this goes from battle ropes to sandbags. Our fitness equipment also come with additional accessories to increase the ease of use for our customers, such as bonus instruction posters or wall mounts. Next Alpha offers a streamlined online purchasing system with fast checkout and speedy delivery to your door.