Functional Fitness Explained - 10 Essential Exercises

We've been doing functional fitness workouts since we started building the best rucking gear on the planet in 2008. Functional fitness is a pillar of GORUCK, after all, because our roots are U.S. Army Special Forces.

When you're in the Special Forces, all physical training focuses on functionality: "How will this workout make me a better soldier?"

You become a better solider by carrying heavy rucksacks over challenging terrain, climbing obstacle courses, and waiting patiently in the leaning rest (AKA plank) position. Those functional fitness exercises (and there are many more we'll talk about below) give soldiers the coordination, strength, agility, and endurance to carry out their missions.

And you've got some missions, too, don't you?

So like those soldiers, you're going to need some functional fitness workouts in your tool box.

That's where we come in. For over a decade, we've been leading individuals and communities forward into a fitter, healthier future. More sweat, more sunshine, more dopamine. And our workouts are always functional. We'll talk about how we keep them functional later.

Want to be fitter and healthier? Want more sweat, sunshine, and dopamine in your life?

We're going to show you what functional fitness is all about.

What is Functional Fitness?

Functional fitness exercises improve your ability to complete everyday tasks. In other words, functional fitness workouts make you better at life. Just like soldiers utilize workouts that make them better at executing missions, you can create a workout program that helps you execute your missions better.

Well, what are your missions? What movements, tasks, and activities do you perform hourly, daily, and weekly?

For many of us, functional fitness workouts help us in 6 main areas:

1. Lifting things
2. Pushing & pulling
3. Carrying/holding things
4. Covering distance on foot (AKA walking or running)
5. Balancing/coordination
6. Cardiovascular health

Improving these 6 areas of essential daily function will help with whatever missions you've got on your daily agenda. Whether you're lifting a child, carrying a ripped grocery bag, or parking far away from the restaurant, functional fitness will give you a physical (and mental) advantage.

It really is all about making life smoother. Not necessarily easier, but smoother.

AKA Tactical Fitness

You might hear the phrase tactical fitness in law enforcement and military circles. Tactical fitness refers to men and women in uniform performing exercises that prepare them for duty. Tactical fitness is all about improving endurance, strength, and agility. The workouts are gritty, focus on full-body movements, and can imitate real life scenarios (dragging, carrying, running).

Tactical fitness is a more specific branch of functional fitness, and they can often be used interchangeably. Many of the exercises and workouts are similar. In tactical fitness programs, though, you might see a bigger emphasis on weight vests (to simulate body armor), explosive movements (like sprints), and dragging (to simulate helping a wounded teammate).

Isolation exercises

Isolation exercises aren't often included in functional fitness workout programs. We won't be including any here, either. Isolation exercises target smaller groups of muscles. Curls hit your biceps, leg curl machines target your hamstrings, and triceps extensions target your triceps.

Those are just a few examples of isolation exercises. A functional exercise, on the other hand, will recruit multiple large muscle groups. Don't worry, they'll hit your biceps, triceps, and hamstrings, too.

Heavy carries train your biceps and forearms. Pushups and overhead presses work your triceps. Deadlifts and swings hit your hamstrings.

Functional fitness workouts hit every muscle group, so don't worry about having toned biceps. We'll take care of them.

Functional Fitness Workouts: The GORUCK Way

We want to add something to the popular understanding of functional fitness. We've never seen it mentioned anywhere else, but we believe it, preach it, and practice it.

Functional fitness workouts should get you outdoors more often.

The infamous 75 Hard fitness challenge requires you to complete one of your two daily workouts outdoors. We like that. That's why we like rucking, too.

Outdoor exercise has serious positive effects on mental health. Exposure to nature improves cognitive function. Sunshine helps regulate your sleep cycles and produces feel-good chemicals in your brain. Mix in a good sweaty workout and you'll be feeling amazing.

When we sleep better and our brains are happy, we do better at life.

That is functional fitness.

It might not be an academic definition or one your physical therapist prescribes, but it's working for us.

Benefits of functional fitness

What do you get out of functional fitness?

That's a fair question. If you're performing these exercises regularly and working up a sweat, you should get something special out of it, right? What's the hype of functional fitness training if there's no unique reward?

Rest assured, there are unique benefits. Aside from being better at everything in daily life, functional fitness might give you...

• Better range of motion
• Less back pain
• Improved posture
• Better balance
• Improved grip strength
• Less headaches (figurative headaches, like not being able to carry all the groceries up a flight of stairs)

When you train functionally, you're using motions and muscles that are often neglected--until they're desperately needed. The idea is to train these motions and muscles more often in a safe, practical way. To keep them strong, mobile, and responsive, you've got to use them more. It's all about quality of life.

For example...

Better range of motion

Range of motion exercises allow you to be more mobile (some might call it "flexible"), reduce stiffness, and improve quality of life. When you can squat deeper, reach farther, and bend without back pain, your quality of life gets better.

Functional fitness under a trained professional (like a physical therapist or StrongFirst coach) can focus on individual joints and patterns. But on your own (with just a Sand Kettlebell and a good pair of cross training shoes), you can make great strides in improving your range of motion.

Less back pain

You know what helps relieve back pain? A strong core and good posture. You know how to get a strong core and good posture? Carrying heavy things, rucking, and training with irregular sandbags.

If you have back pain, talk to your doctor about core, leg, and back exercises that will provide relief. We'll list some below, too.

Improved posture

For people that sit at desks or drive all day, good posture requires practice. Bad posture can lead to neck and back pain, or stiffness. And with more and more people sitting in front of computers all day or staring down at their phones, posture matters.

Let's bring back good posture.

Rucking (our favorite functional fitness workout) is a good place to start. When you wear a rucksack, your shoulders are pulled back and your core is turned on. These two things help take strain off your lower back. With your chest up and your eyes forward, your posture while rucking will be better than most modern people.

You'll start to notice it even when you're not rucking: a taller posture with alignment that feels good. That's one of the physical benefits of rucking. Your posture improves over time.

Better balance

Functional fitness workouts improve your balance and coordination, which is important at every age (not just when you're older). Our favorite way to train balance and coordination is using sandbags. They're shifty, irregular, and come in a variety of weights and sizes. Plus, you can throw them and drop them without breaking anything.

Take a 40-60 LBS sandbag for a walk. Start on one shoulder and move it to the other when you're tired. Then place is across your upper back. Then carry it in front. You core, hips, shoulders, and legs will be compensating (AKA balancing, coordinating) for the shifting weight. This simple, functional exercise trains your body to stay upright and move smoothly under varying loads.

Improved grip strength

Grip strength is important for daily tasks like carrying heavy grocery bags, moving furniture, and yard work. A strong grip (hand and forearm strength) makes you an asset to your friends. Be warned: functional fitness training might make you the go-to phone call for help shoveling mulch or moving a heavy dresser.

So your friends and family get some benefits, too.

Less headaches

Yes, you'll have less figurative headaches when you're functionally fit. Life is just a bit easier when your body is accustomed to various movements and obstacles. Climbing long flights of stairs, jumping over puddles, and kids who just don't want to walk anymore...you get the point. Pick the kid up. Keep your shoes dry. Climb those stairs.

No problem. Functional fitness prepares you for life.

And you know what? You might have less real headaches, too.

Improved posture, injury prevention, cardiovascular health, and the better sleep that comes from regular resistance training outdoors. That's one antidote for headaches.

10 Essential Functional Fitness Exercises

Now we need to talk about our favorite functional fitness exercises. Depending on who you ask, you'll get lots of different recommendations. But at GORUCK, our recommendations are all about getting better at life. Nobody can argue with that.

We'll talk about the tools and equipment that will help you develop functional strength and endurance later. Let's cover some exercises first.

Remember, these exercises should cover more than one of the following...

1. Lifting things
2. Pushing & pulling
3. Carrying/holding things
4. Covering distance on foot (AKA walking or running)
5. Balancing/coordination
6. Cardiovascular health

1. Rucking

Rucking is ultimate functional fitness. For thousands of years, humans have carried food, weapons, and supplies on their backs. If you can move heavy weight over distance (we recommend starting with a 10-20 LBS Ruck Plate®), you're an asset to your family, your team, and your community.

In Four Fitness Skills Every Human Needs, Michael Easter names the carry and covering ground as two essential fitness skills. Spoiler alert, Michael loves rucking.

Rucking is as useful for modern people as it's always been. It toughens your feet, improves your posture, and strengthens your core. Rucking builds lean muscle, too. Your shoulders, back, and legs get stronger from rucking. Bring a Sand Kettlebell on your ruck and work on grip strength, too.

Rucking combines cardio and strength training without the pounding of running. It torches calories (very important in our modern, sedentary world).

Remember our 6 main areas of functional fitness? Rucking covers 4 of them:

1. Carrying/holding things
2. Covering distance on foot
3. Balancing/coordination
4. Cardiovascular health

You're taking weight over a few miles (1 and 2). Your core stabilizes every step under weight, adjusting as the rucksack shifts slightly on your back (3). Your core also compresses under the weight, taking strain off your lower back. And finally, rucking is a great cardio workout (4). You'll see what we mean when you reach your first hill, or try to meet the Army Ranger standard.

If you join a GORUCK Club, you'll be hanging out with other ruckers outdoors, too. So that's a big boost for mental health and wellness.

2. Training with sandbags

Sandbag training is a cornerstone of functional fitness. You can build an entire home gym just with sandbags (and maybe a Rucker®). Sandbags are great because they're basically indestructible. So there's nothing you can't do with them.

You can safely toss, haul, drag, and drop a sandbag. Which means you can build some seriously functional workouts.

Sandbags are shifty and irregular, too. That's a good thing. When you're moving bags of soil around the garden, rearranging furniture, or hauling a bag of golf clubs, the weight tends to be shifty and irregular.

Shifty, irregular weight should be in every functional fitness program. With proper form and recovery, you won't get injured. But you will get stronger and more adaptable, and that's what we're after.

There's nothing off-limits with sandbags.

In fact, many of the remaining exercises on this list can be performed with sandbags. You can use free weights, of course. But we think you'll like sandbags better.

3. Heavy carries

There are lots of ways to perform heavy loaded carries. We wrote about this functional strength + cardio exercise right here. Basically, carrying heavy things is one of the best functional fitness exercises because it recruits every muscle in your body, plus your heart and lungs, and checks all these boxes: lifting, carrying/holding, covering distance on foot, balancing/coordination, and cardio.

Picture this. You bear hug a 100 LBS Sand Tombstone and take it for a walk. How far could you go before you ran out of breath? Or your arms and back got tired? Or your legs couldn't take another step?

Put the Tombstone down. Now pick it back up and keep going. Or switch to the Farmer's Carry (walking with weight in both hands) with Sand Jerry Cans. Next up? Put a Sand Medicine Ball on your shoulder and take it for a walk, switching shoulders when you turn around.

Heavy carries are ultimate functional fitness. The strength, power, balance, coordination, and cardio benefits are unmatched. When you train with sandbags, you unlock functional exercises (and all their benefits) not possible with weights, machines, and treadmills.

4. Deadlift

The deadlift is the ultimate strength exercise. With good form, deadlifts will engage your core, back, shoulders, legs, and arms. It's a real full body workout. Now, you don't have to deadlift super heavy to reap the benefits. In fact, deadlifting with a heavy Sand Kettlebell is enough for most people to improve their daily lifting capabilities (their functional fitness).

If you work up to deadlifting a 44 LBS Sand Kettlebell (or two), you'll be much more capable of lifting heavy things around the house or yard.

With barbells in a gym, you can go heavier. Nothing wrong with that if your goal is to pack on muscle. But for functional fitness purposes, lighter sandbags are more versatile and can be used at home. You can drop them without risk of injury or damage. They travel well, too.

Sandbags are the perfect foundation for a home functional fitness gym.

5. Squats

Just like deadlifts, squats engage your largest muscle groups. During a squat, most of the weight will be on your legs and core. You can perform front squats or back squats, but both require good form and positioning the weight correctly.

For front squats, hold a Sand Kettlebell at chest level and squat, lowering your hips and pushing them back. When your elbows are an inch or two above your knees, stand all the way back up. Your knees should track outward and your feet should be slightly wider than shoulder-width apart.

Front squats load more weight onto your abs and core, so keep those muscles engaged as you go through the motion. This is a serious exercise that will test your strength and stamina, without needing heavy weight. Front squats improve your range of motion (most of us aren't immediately comfortable squatting while holding weight at our chest) and improve the power of your legs.

Back squats are the more popular variation and are usually performed with a barbell in the gym. If you want to make back squats more functional, though, you'll do them with sand and a rucksack.

When you use sand for back squats, you're building strength, power, balance, and coordination. It starts when you've got to get the sandbag on your back. Unlike in the gym, where the weight is positioned for you to step under, a sandbag must be hoisted to your shoulders (see the video below). It also shifts during exercise (moderately--not enough to lose your balance, just enough to engage your muscles to support the weight). That shifting simulates real world lifting. Because most things we lift in regular life aren't perfectly balanced and stable.

Our muscles need some unbalanced weight and shifting tension to be prepared for shoveling snow and hauling luggage through a busy airport.

If you can squat with a sandbag while wearing a rucksack, you're more prepared for whatever life puts in your path. Anything that requires leg strength, at least.

What about bodyweight squats?

Yes, bodyweight squats are a good functional fitness exercise. Adding weight, though, requires more from your muscles. In the long term, you want to level up slowly. If you're only doing bodyweight squats, you'll need to keep adding more squats to continue developing your fitness.

When you add weight, you'll improve your coordination, range of motion, and power. Plus, your heart and lungs will work harder. One Sand Kettlebell in your home gym arsenal can make a big difference in functional fitness gains.

If you're just getting started with functional training and you don't have any sandbags or a training rucksack, bodyweight squats are a fine exercise. But eventually you'll want to add some weight.

6. Kettlebell swings

Kettlebell swings look easy enough. But they require a lot of power from your hips, coordination, and cardio. Just like squats and deadlifts, swings put a lot of tension (the good kind) on multiple large muscle groups: your shoulders, back, core, and legs will all feel the burn when you're swinging a Sand Kettlebell.

When you nail kettlebell swings, they feel smooth. And very challenging.

Here are some tips for performing the tried and true kettlebell swing...

1. All power should come from driving your hips. There is no lifting or pulling in the kettlebell swing.
2. Drive through your heels and keep your feet stable. The weight should not throw you off balance. You should be like a solid machine throughout the swinging motion.
3. Keep your shoulders down to engage your lats.
4. The top of your swing only needs to go to eye level.
5. The motion is a hinge, not a squat. Don't bend your knees too much.

7. Overhead presses

There are a couple different kinds of overhead presses that you should include in a functional fitness workout program. Pressing weight overhead is a full body exercise that recruits your shoulders, back, legs, and core. Pushing and holding weight overhead requires strength, power, and coordination. Using sandbags, you'll get extra balance training, too, as your muscles adjust to the irregular weight.

Pressing weight overhead is an excellent functional fitness exercise. Whether you're grabbing things from tall cabinets or putting a new coat of paint on your walls, having strong shoulders is important.

Check out the strict press and push press in the video below.

Holding things overhead

Holding weight overhead (while standing still or walking) is a great way to train your shoulders, back, legs, and core for endurance. We're putting it here to reemphasize an important part of functional fitness: carrying heavy things is good for you.

You won't go as heavy on overhead carries as you might on Tombstone or Sand Medicine Ball carries, but they give your body a unique challenge that can't be replicated. Stability, strength, and endurance all come into play when you're carrying weight overhead.

Sometimes functional fitness is about staying healthy and pain-free. Strong shoulders stay healthy, and healthy shoulders keep you active and pain-free.

It's a quality of life exercise.

8. Rows

Like the exercises listed above, rows can be performed with barbells and weights. But with sandbags you can do rows at home (and don't have to worry about dropping the weight). When performing rows, keep your body locked in a strong position, only using your arms to pull the weight into your sternum.

You'll feel rows (whether you do them one-handed or two-handed) in your lats and arms, mostly. Remember, functional fitness exercises work multiple large muscle groups.

Rows improve your back strength and health. They'll make it easier to lift anything, too.

9. Pushups

A good functional fitness program will work every muscle in your body. That balance is functionally important. Well, rather than using the bench press or chest flies, include pushups in your workouts. Pushups require more core and shoulder stability than free weight exercises.

When you increase the weight with a Rucker®, your core strength will see massive gains. The top position of the pushup (arms locked out) becomes much tougher when you're wearing a rucksack.

10. Twisting exercises

Twisting requires a lot of core strength, balance, and stability. You twist everyday when you reach for something across your body, or lean your torso while reaching. Training for daily twists is possible, and we recommend two important exercises to get it done: the kettlebell twist and the sandbag pull through.

When you train these exercises, your core strength and grip strength improve. And these help you with every other exercise on the list. Don't skip twists.

Functional Fitness Video Libraries

These 10 exercises don't cover every functional fitness exercise. But they're the basics. Luckily, we have three free video libraries to learn more functional fitness exercises and help you build your own workouts.

Don't get sloppy: always pay attention to form and cadence.

Check these out...

• Daily Tribe Workouts
• Sand Kettlebell exercises
• Sandbag + Rucksack exercises

Functional Fitness Training Tools

The least expensive home gym is the one focused on functional fitness. You don't need squat racks, dumbbells, and treadmills to achieve your health goals. In fact, a home gym centered on just a few pieces of equipment will save you a ton of money. If your equipment is compact (as sandbags are), you can travel with it. It's easier to move, sell, and store a couple sandbags than all the latest home gym strength equipment.

Just our two cents.

We've been doing it for years.

Here's our functional fitness must-haves:

1. Supportive training shoes that support your feet and provide lateral stability.
2. Rucker® or Ruck Plate Carrier™ because carrying weight on your back is a cornerstone of functional fitness. It's strength and cardio combined, improves core strength, and makes you really good at covering long distances on foot. Get a Ruck Plate® for carrying the weight comfortably.

    

3. A training sandbag for all the exercises listed above, and more.
4. A Sand Kettlebell to learn and practice important movements like kettlebell swings.
5. Sand Medicine Balls to build fun (AKA hard) workouts that involve throwing, carrying, and pressing.

Start small. With just a rucksack and a sandbag you can create serious functional fitness workouts.

Sample Functional Fitness Workouts

If you ever need help building workouts, our Daily Tribe Workouts are full of good ideas. There're hundreds of workouts for you to browse.

Functional fitness workouts are usually pretty simple. We're rucking, pushing, pulling, twisting, hinging, and carrying. There's some balance and coordination because we're using sand. We're hitting strength and cardio, improving range of motion, and getting better at life. We're probably outside, too, because sweat + sunshine flood our brains with positivity chemicals (which are very functional).

1. RUCK > STRENGTH

The first style of functional training involves starting with a ruck march before performing a strength routine.

1. Ruck 3 miles in less than 60 minutes
2. 3 rounds: 10 Sand Kettlebell swings, 10 rucksack push presses, 10 sandbag rows

Simple, effective, full body. In this workout you'll ruck for strength + cardio, hinge during swings, push, and pull. That variety is essential for well-rounded fitness, AKA fitness that translates well to daily life.

Rotate the exercises listed, add others, or increase volume.

2. RUCK > STRENGTH > RUCK

You can break your ruck march apart with strength exercises, too. And because you've got the weight on your back, you don't need to bring anything extra with you (except maybe a hydration bladder).

Let's pretend you're rucking with a 30 LBS Ruck Plate®. Great, you've got everything you need for a functional fitness workout.

1. Ruck 1 mile
2. 10 rucksack pull throughs
3. 20 rucksack push presses
4. 30 rucksack pushups
5. Ruck 1 mile

Remember, these workouts are scalable. Make them easier or harder by adjusting time, distance, weight, or reps. When you're training with indestructible rucksacks and sandbags, the possibilities are endless.

3. STRENGTH > RUCK

This format gets your muscles tired before the ruck, increasing your calorie burn by ensuring your body is working harder to carry the load. It's a good mental toughness exercise, and there's nothing more functional than mental toughness.

Check out this OGRE workout for inspiration.

For the strength portion of this workout, you might wear your rucksack.

1. 50 Sand Medicine Balls ground to overhead for time (as seen above)
2. 25 rucksack pushups
3. 50 rucksack squats
4. 25 Sand Medicine Ball twists
5. Ruck 3 miles

4. STRENGTH > RUCK > STRENGTH

How about another strength workout after your ruck march? This is a very challenging workout format. Make sure your form is solid and you're hydrating. Invite a GORUCK Club friend for this style of functional fitness training.

Again, choose your difficulty: rucksack or no rucksack.

1. 3 rounds: 20 sandbag push presses, 20 walking lunge steps, 20 sandbag deadlifts
2. Ruck 2 miles
3. 3 rounds: 20 Sand Kettlebell swings, 20 rucksack pushups, 20 rucksack squats

5. CARRIES

Occasionally, include a workout centered on carrying. It's one of the best workouts for core strength, grip strength, and endurance. Carrying heavy things is foundational for athleticism, health, and wellness.

Get yourself a Sand Tombstone for carrying workouts. Alternatively, you can hoist a Sand Medicine Ball to your shoulder or perform the Farmer's Carry.

If all you've got right now is a rucksack or sandbag, you can carry those, too. Hoist them to your shoulders, overhead, or bear hug them in front of you.

When performing carrying workouts, don't get caught up on the distance. Use a parking lot, your street, or a football field. Just be consistent and make progress. You don't need to know the exact distance of your carries.

1. 100m Sand Tombstone carry
2. 50 rucksack pull throughs
3. 100m Sand Tombstone carry
4. 50 rucksack strict presses
5. 200m Sand Tombstone carry

This workout is 400m long, which is the length of a track. All you need is a rucksack and a Sand Tombstone. How many laps around the track can you get done?

Functional Fitness Challenges

You've seen some functional fitness exercises, workouts, and gear. Using all this information, you can build some pretty badass workouts that will make you stronger, improve your cardio, and elevate your functional fitness (making daily life smoother).

When your functional fitness is developed--when you can lift heavy things, carry heavy things, cover distance on foot, have good balance and coordination, and have a strong heart (AKA good cardio)--you're an asset to any team, family, and community.

And that's what we're all about.

We're also all about doing hard things. Setting big goals. Challenging ourselves.

You'll find no shortage of fitness challenges online and on social media, but we've got our own list here. It's a functional fitness challenge list.

When you want to really test your fitness and see how far you've come (or how far you still have to go...), try some of these workouts and challenges...

1. The GORUCK Challenge

The GORUCK Challenge is the ultimate functional fitness test. It's modeled on Special Forces selection, and there are different levels for different fitness capabilities (so anyone can get in on the action).

You're going to ruck (of course), perform PT, carry logs, and cover some ground. You're going to hurt and earn a cool patch for your rucksack.

2. The 12 mile ruck

The 12 mile ruck is an essential piece of Army Ranger and Green Beret selection and training. You'll perform the test for time with at least 35 LBS in your rucksack. The standard is 3 hours. It's an effort that requires all your major muscle groups and a lot of mental toughness.

Best done with a friend who's willing to suffer for a few hours.

Perform this simple test seasonally to track your functional fitness progress.

3. 75 Hard

75 Hard is a fitness challenge that requires you to complete a daily checklist for 75 days. No cheat days, no excuses, no whining. One of the daily checklist items is an outdoor workout of at least 45 minutes.

75 Hard is a great excuse to ruck more. It's a transformative challenge that demands discipline and integrity. Do you have what it takes?

4. 10,000 Kettlebell Swings

The 10,000 kettlebell swings challenge is a 30 day endurance challenge that requires you to perform 20 workouts of 500 kettlebell swings.

Simple enough, right?

Like 75 Hard, this challenge is all about consistency and discipline. Yes, you'll get much stronger from swinging each day. But it's more about what happens to your mind over the course of thousands of kettlebell swings.

5. Tribe 'n Training

Tribe 'n Training is our community of likeminded fitness enthusiasts that was born during the pandemic. It's a bunch of people earning cool patches, pushing each other, and prioritizing health and wellness.

You get daily workouts, monthly challenges, and an online community hosted by functional fitness experts. There's no better group for locking in on your goals and living a stronger, healthier life.

Final Thoughts on Functional Fitness

At the end of the day, functional fitness is mostly about improving your quality of life. So your workouts might look different. You might ruck on dirt trails (just get some good all-terrain shoes), cycle and swim, or spend a few hours each week in a gym (just make sure to get some sunshine, ok?). Maybe your functional fitness program is all about getting pain-free, and you train with a physical therapist.

Just make sure you're hitting the key points we mentioned earlier, somewhere in your workouts:

1. Lifting things
2. Pushing & pulling
3. Carrying/holding things
4. Covering distance on foot (AKA walking or running)
5. Balancing/coordination
6. Cardiovascular health

Rucksacks, sandbags, and carrying heavy things will check every box. The benefits of functional fitness training are immense and practical. These movements really do make you better at life. And being good at life has lots of benefits.

That's why we try to get better at life each day.

Functional Fitness Workouts FAQs

We covered a lot in this article, so let's see if we can summarize it with frequently asked questions...

What is a functional fitness exercise?

A functional fitness exercise is a movement that helps improve your quality of life by developing the strength and coordination needed to navigate daily tasks with ease. Some functional fitness exercises mimic everyday tasks (the Farmer's Carry mimics carrying heavy grocery bags). Others are more comprehensive (squats improve strength, balance, and range of motion).

What is the best workout for functional strength?

The best workout for functional strength will include lifting, pushing, pulling, carrying, covering distance on foot, balance & coordination, and cardio. Full body strength movements, heavy carries, and rucking are excellent functional strength workouts.

Is functional fitness the same as HIIT?

No, functional fitness is not the same as high intensity interval training (HIIT). While there might be overlap in the exercises performed, HIIT is focused on bursts of activity that improve cardio while taxing muscles. Many HIIT workouts focus too much on speed and output rather than form and function. Rather, functional fitness workouts can be slower paced and feature more intentional strength movements.

How to start functional fitness?

If you're new to functional fitness, start with rucking. Walking with weight is a full body strength workout that also improves cardio. Once you're comfortable wearing your rucksack, mix in pushups, overhead presses, rows, and squats. Everything you need is already on your back.

Is functional training better than the gym?

You can train functionally in the gym, but we recommend including sunshine in your workouts for a very functional boost in positivity chemicals in your brain. You don't need a full gym to get a good functional fitness workout. With just a sandbag you can train the necessary skills and movements.

Is functional training better than cardio?

Functional training should include cardio. Heart health and lung capacity are super important for quality of life. If you're training functional fitness, don't neglect cardio. You can get a strength and cardio workout by rucking, or walking with a weighted pack.