You may be able to jog 3 miles, but can you get down on the floor and then get back up? Samantha Smith, owner of Greenville Fitness & Rehab, says functional fitness can be the key to not only unlocking athletic potential but also making daily life easier and more enjoyable.
“People will spend a lot of time in the gym, pushing big, heavy weights or spending time on machines, but it doesn’t necessarily mimic day-to-day life,” she said. Functional-fitness exercises are designed to make it easier to do any activity, from weeding your garden to playing hide-and-seek with your kids or grandkids.
Smith, a personal trainer, massage therapist, fitness instructor, and avid cyclist, said functional fitness classes typically use body weight to do exercises that make life easier and make people less prone to injury. Participants can be ultra-fit athletes or those who have never exercised before, including seniors or those who are recovering from surgery or injury.
Smith teaches a weekly class at Carolina Triathlon and sees mountain bikers, high school athletes and their parents, and exercise newbies all looking to strengthen the body at the foundational level.
Because most of the movements are simple, participants can do them on the same day as other exercises and not be worn out, she said. Movements like multidirectional lunges or balance work help train the body to move sideways, backward, or diagonally, and help build balance by taxing the body equally on both sides.
Instead of focusing on one body part, functional exercises tend to use many, working the back, legs, glutes, and more in a coordinated way.
Smith likes to focus on core-specific exercises — and not the six-pack abs most people think of.
“The core is made up of nine specific structures in the deepest part of the body, and when they are worked they form a very good foundation for functional strength and injury prevention,” she said. “That six-pack is superficial. You can do crunches until the cows come home and still have a weak core.”
At her location near Cherrydale, Smith and her staff work one-on-one with clients to achieve their specific goals and address their particular weaknesses — often weak glutes that stem from days spent sitting. Once people are back to enjoying being active in their daily lives, the world opens up to them as far as additional activities they can pursue, she said.
“If you can prepare your body to be bulletproof on a day-to-day basis and have that strong foundation, you can build on that” in activities such as biking, running, tennis, or golf, she said. “People will start a program like this, and then they’ll realize how much it helps with the sport they love. I love keeping people doing what they love.”
