The Importance of Functional Fitness and Strength Training

Have you ever thought about beginning the process of working out only to stop because you didn’t know how to start or what to even do?

I was pretty lost when I started, and I oftentimes found myself just kind of defaulting to what my doctor usually recommended or what I read in articles and magazines which was to start running. 

Since I hated running, and still don’t find it to be an enjoyable activity, that made me dread the thought of trying to get a workout routine started. 

• I hate running.
• Is there no other way to lose weight effectively?
• I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing.
• I hate running.

These thoughts ran through my mind all the time.

I know I listed “I hate running” twice in that list but honestly, I hated running so much, that thought popped into my head multiple times. 

I had defaulted to doing these activities in the past and honestly, I was miserable the whole time and I never actually saw the benefits of losing weight or having any kind of tone or definition in my muscles.

My journey of fitness and overall health has been full of mistakes, especially at the start.

When I restarted my health journey close to 8 years ago, I made a lot of mistakes. 

Whether it was charging ahead half-cocked with incomplete or completely wrong nutrition information or deciding it was a brilliant idea to work out 1-2 hours a day with a massive calorie deficit 5 days a week, I made quite a few detrimental health decisions. 

There was one thing that I got correct, right out of the gate.

Instead of focusing completely on cardio activities, I decided to try something new and very different for me. 

I had read a little about the benefits of lifting weights and how building muscle through that process aided in overall weight loss. 

I didn’t know much about the process since I hadn’t ever really focused on weight training.

Truthfully, I found it intimidating but I decided to try it anyway because for me, it wasn’t cardio, and it might be an activity that I could stick with for a longer time.

Everyone’s got to start somewhere, and for me, it was 2 cans of soup.

When I first started on this path, I didn’t own any weights. 

No dumbbells, kettlebells, weight plates, nothing. 

I found this very simple 12-week weightlifting program online and got it.

It was straightforward to follow, and I was so determined to start that I began by using 2 cans of soup, which each weighed less than a single pound, as my weights. 

I was so weak and out of shape, those 2 cans kicked me in the butt, and it was so hard to get through those initial workouts. 

These workouts weren’t complex either, they were 10 repetitions of a movement, like bicep curls, 3 times. 

But just because something is simple, doesn’t mean that it’s easy.

My husband bought me my first real weight set and it had a pair of 1-pound weights, 3-pound weights, and 5-pound weights.

After a week of soup cans, I moved up to the 1-pound pair of dumbbells. 

They were tiny and pink, but I remember thinking to myself:

“These are so much heavier than the soup cans. I can’t do this, it’s too hard.” 

I kept pushing and after 2 weeks, I moved from my little pink weights to the 3-pound dumbbells and when that happened, I remember feeling this huge sense of pride in what I had been able to accomplish.

I know it doesn’t sound like a lot going from 1 to 3 pounds in each hand, but it’s those small wins that are the key to motivating you to keep going forward.

What’s all this have to do with functional fitness?

I stuck with that simple weightlifting program for a long time, well over the 12 weeks it laid out. 

Every time I finished, I would just start over again. 

One day, I was watching a documentary on Netflix with my husband, and it was about the 2015 CrossFit Games and while I was watching it, I realized, there’s a lot more to strength training than just the bicep curls, tricep extensions, and weighted squats I had been doing. 

Now, having that realization and doing something about it took a pretty long time, about 2 years, but that’s the great part about health journeys, you get to learn and grow.

What is functional fitness?

The name itself can come across as intimidating, but functional fitness is just practicing those movements that the human body was created to do by God. 

They are natural movements that the body is hardwired to perform.

For example, every time you go to sit down on the toilet or get out of a chair, you are performing a squat movement.

No one had to teach you to do it, your body just knows how to effectively go from a standing position into a seated or squatting position. 

Functional movements always involve the use of multiple joints versus a single-joint movement like a leg extension on a machine. 

For example, when performing a squat, you are using your hips, knees, and ankles from a lower body perspective while using your upper body to help stabilize your back and core. You’re using your entire body in some way to either balance or lower into the squat and then stand back up again. 

The cool part about functional fitness is that since it involves practicing movements that you need to do on an everyday basis, lifting groceries, getting on/off a toilet, and getting off the floor, you are creating a situation where you are improving your capacity for independence throughout your entire life. 

Focusing on functional movements has a huge host of benefits, but specifically, it helps build muscle and bone density and improves your brain. 

Osteoporosis, or loss of bone mass and density, and sarcopenia, or loss of lean muscle mass, are real dangers that many people face as they age. 

Incorporating strength training plays a huge role in potentially reducing the risk of developing osteoporosis or sarcopenia.

God created our bodies to be beautifully intelligent and resilient machines. 

If your bones do not experience any kind of compression or torsional forces on them, your body thinks that they don’t need to have as much bone mass because you’re not using them. 

So, osteoclasts are then instructed by the body to break down the bone tissue so that material can be better utilized somewhere else.

If you place tension or compression on your bones, which happens through strength training, your body reacts by using osteoblasts to reinforce those muscle connections on the bone by remineralizing and increasing the bone density. 

Something similar happens with your lean muscle. As you lift weights or do bodyweight exercises, you create tears in your muscles and put stress on muscle tissue and connections. 

As you sleep, those tears and stressed areas within your muscle tissue are rebuilt and strengthened so that it’s more difficult to tear or break the muscle tissue resulting in increased muscle mass and strength. 

Functional fitness also helps your brain.

Doing functional movements and strength training helps improve brain function and neuroplasticity. 

As you start to learn how to do movements safely and quickly, your brain must create new pathways in its neural network so that it can adapt to learning how to coordinate and balance your body. 

As you learn more movements and put them together in unique ways, you increase your brain-body connections and improve your coordination and agility. 

Strength training also helps your mood as causes the brain to release endorphins which improve your mood and decrease anxiety.

I know how hard it is to start a new lifestyle, especially one that involves working out and changing your nutrition. Here are some simple tips that you can use to get started on your new journey:

• Plan out your day ahead of time. Workouts don’t have to be long, try 20-30 minutes a day, 3-4 times a week. Even if you start with 2 days, that’s better than not doing it at all
• Don’t worry about using weights or equipment when you are first starting. Focus on using your bodyweight first as oftentimes, just that will be enough to start your strength training journey.
• Focus on the basics – squats, push-ups, deadlifts, and strict presses. These are the fundamentals of functional movement and are variations of the movements that you do every day.
• Focus on form first. Speed and weight will improve eventually but you must ensure that you are doing the movements correctly and safely so that you can build strength, speed, and coordination to minimize the chances of getting hurt.
• Ask for help when you aren’t sure. Community is an amazing thing, something that I undervalued for a long time. Having people to reach out to for help and support is so critical to being able to stick to a change in lifestyle.
• Get a coach. Coaches provide instruction, encouragement, and accountability which are all key components of success when it comes to changes in life. I know that my God-given purpose is to be a coach and to help others get healthier so that they, in turn, can fulfill their God-given purposes in life.

Your health and wellness matter to God. He created all of us to move and work. 

God created all of us for a purpose and to fulfill that purpose, we must be able to move and work for as long as possible. 

Even before the fall, we were created to work with perfect bodies, for eternity. Genesis 2:15 says:

“The Lord God put the man in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” 

Functional fitness and strength training allow us to build strength and physical independence across our entire lives. 

This physical independence is critical to all of us fulfilling our God-given purposes in life. 

For a long time, the majority of my adult life really, I couldn’t fulfill my purpose, I simply wasn’t well enough to do it, either physically, mentally, or spiritually. 

I was truly living my life from the sidelines, a bystander in my own life. 

I distinctly remember being over 240 pounds and my kids asking me to play with them.

My response was always, “I’ll watch you play.” 

The inability to participate with my family had a huge toll on my mental and emotional state. 

I wasn’t effective as a mother, a wife, or even an employee. 

It wasn’t until I accepted who I was in God’s eyes that everything started to turn around for me, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. 

It was only then that I started to get well enough that I could truly fulfill my purpose. 

At the end of the day, everyone is on a journey, we’re all works in progress. 

I’m still on my journey close to 8 years later but thanks to my relationship with God and practicing strength training through functional fitness, I’m the strongest and healthiest I’ve ever been in my adult life.

It is never too late for you to start your journey; it just takes that first step in faith for you to begin to fulfill your purpose.