The body is incredible in its engineering. One muscle’s movement informs another. Tendons tighten and store energy like rubber bands. Your core tightens and stabilizes you which increases the amount of weight you can pick up. Yet when we go to the gym what do we do? We sit down in static machines and work a single muscle group, We grab a dumbbell and do some bicep curls, we lay down on a bench and press as much weight as we can. Then after all of that we go and bend over to pick up a load of laundry and throw our back out. What happened? Are we not fit? The answer to that is yes, you are strong and you exercise but there is something more to simple strength. The body is unruly and if left to its own devices will take the path of least resistance. This is why the body and all its members must be trained to work together. This is where functional fitness comes in.

Functional fitness is…

Functional fitness is fitness that most correlates with life’s everyday tasks. Picking up your groceries, picking up your kids, stretching to reach the light bulb, standing up after falling down and any life activity that might come to us. When you train for functional fitness you train your body to utilize all of the muscles and structures at its disposal to move the weight through space. That weight might be a barbell or the box that you moved while helping a friend. CrossFit is all about functional fitness. We routinely take weight from the floor to overhead. We practice gymnastics by learning to do one-legged squat. We stress our cardiovascular systems and then do back squats.

All of this together teaches our bodies to utilize the many systems it has in place to move through space. This helps us avoid injury in life while also having the added benefit of being really good exercise. If you truly commit to the process and let the coaches at CrossFit Citadel guide you then you can find a whole new level of mobility, health and simple pleasure in being functionally fit.