5 functional exercises for total-body benefits

If you’re looking to improve your health, fitness, mobility and body, you can do it all by incorporating these 5 movement-based functional exercises into your routine!

Functional training targets multiple muscles and movement patterns with compound exercises to build strength, offering beneficial carryover into everyday life and sporting performance while also transforming your physique and enhancing your mobility.

More functional movements

Despite these benefits, functional training is generally underutilised in conventional gyms as members focus on traditional weight training machines or follow bodybuilding programs.

Including these foundational movements in your routine is a great way to add variety to training sessions while benefiting from serious gains in strength, muscle growth and fat loss.

#1: Goblet squats

This squat variation activates more muscles and improves hip mobility, which is a great combination to improve functional strength and everyday movement patterns.

How to do it: Stand holding a kettlebell on the horns below your chin, away from your body. Place your heels hip-width apart. Engage your core, push your hips back and your knees forward as you squat down. Slip your elbows between your knees in the bottom position. Drive up through your heels and extend your knees and hips to return to the starting position.

Form tip: Keep your chest and head up, with your head and neck in a neutral position, and a tall spine.

 #2. Alternating rotational presses

Free weights offer better functional benefits than machines and this exercise adds a rotational element to improve mobility in your thoracic spine and upper torso. You will also engage and strengthen your core as you twist and press your way to stronger, more shapely shoulders.

How to do it: Clean two dumbbells up to your shoulders. Press one dumbbell directly overhead by extending your elbow and your shoulder. Rotate your torso to the same side as you do so. Lower the pressed dumbbell to the starting position and immediately press with your other arm, repeating the rotation movement in the other direction.

Form tip: Keep your feet flat on the floor and your toes pointing forward throughout the movement.

#3. Dumbbell reverse lunges off step

The unilateral loading in this exercise has important athletic crossover for any sport that involves running, developing your quads and glutes for greater knee and hip stability, reducing your injury risk, with greater force production during any activity that involves running.

How to do it: Stand on a 12cm (or lower) step holding a dumbbell in both hands. Step back with one leg. Plant your toe and then drop your knee to descend into a reverse lunge. Lower your body by flexing the knee and hip of your back leg, until your knee almost makes contact with the floor. Sit back between your knees as you descend under control into the backward lunge. Return to the starting position by engaging your glute, extending the hip and knee of your forward leg and returning your back leg to the platform.

Form tip: Keep your shoulders back, your weight on your front elevated foot weight and your centre of balance over your hips.

#4. Wrestler row

This bent-over row variation engages your back and arm muscles while also delivering anti-rotational benefits for a stronger core. It also promotes unilateral stability and forces you to brace in the hinge position, which builds functional strength.

How to do it: Stand with your feet slightly wider than hip-width apart, with your entire foot planted firmly on the ground and weight distributed evenly throughout. Hold a dumbbell in your left hand with a neutral grip (palm facing in). Sit back into your hips as you hinge forward at the hips. Allow the dumbbell to hang straight down below your shoulder. Hold the opposite ‘free’ arm out to the side to act as a counterbalance. Engage and brace your core and bring your shoulder blades back and down. Row the dumbbell up by driving your elbow back, dragging it up close to your body. At the top position, brace your shoulder blades as you transfer the weight from your left to your right hand. Lower the dumbbell down, controlling its motion in the eccentric (lengthening or lowering) phase. Repeat the movement in an alternating pattern.

Form tip: Maintain a neutral head, neck and spine throughout the movement and keep your knees bent.

#5. Plank walkouts

Your abs do more than flex so you need to do more than just crunches and sit-ups to develop a strong and functional core. Developing trunk stability and dynamic strength with this functional movement will give you a bulletproof midsection.

How to do it: Start in a standing position. Drop down onto your hands into a modified kneeling plank position, with your feet hip-width apart, your weight on your toes and your knees off the floor. Keep your back straight and core engaged as you walk your hands forward to move into an extended plank. Walk your hands past your shoulders until they are above your head. Hold this position to activate your core. Walk your hands back to your feet until you are in the starting position.

Form tip: Keep your pelvis tucked, glutes contracted and spine in a neutral position.