5 Functional Strength Exercises for Real-Life Fitness

Functional strength is key to everyday life. It helps you seamlessly perform movements like standing, sitting, squatting to tie your shoes, and twisting to look behind you. Improving strength is your ticket to fewer injuries, better balance, and an all-around smoother day-to-day. If getting fit with just five functional strength moves sounds appealing to you, you’re on the right page. We’re here with a workout from Antonietta Vicario, Chief Training Officer for Pvolve, a low-impact, high-intensity fitness program—and Jennifer Aniston’s go-to form of training.

Pvolve blends functional movement and resistance training, and it’s all about building stability, strength, and flexibility. The movements we have today will help make performing everyday tasks a total breeze.

“We want to train these patterns through corrective alignment and active muscular engagement so that as you move through your day, you are doing so with better posture and alignment,” explains Antonietta. “Functional strength adds weight training to these patterns, loading your muscles to help them build. While typical strength training will help you gain muscle mass, we at Pvolve help you do so while also improving your mobility and stability to unlock maximum movement longevity.”

Training functional movement patterns is crucial.

“We move dynamically through daily life, and so our training should mimic that,” says Antonietta. “We incorporate mobility into our strength training as it works our joints through their full ranges of motion to reduce both joint sensitivity and tightness in the body and lessen the risk of injuries. We also add stability work to create better balance in the body, sharpen our reflexes, and lessen the risk of falls. All this will increase your health span beyond just isolating muscles for growth.”Here are the five top functional strength exercises Antonietta recommends, what each movement trains, and how to perform each.

5 Functional Strength Exercises for Real-Life Fitness

Staggered Sit To Stand to With Overhead Reach

This movement trains your muscles to lift objects overhead and bend to grab something off the ground.

“This trains us on how to safely lift things off the floor, strengthening the glutes and intentionally using our exhale to brace through our core so we don’t strain the lower back,” Antonietta points out. “As you gain strength, you can increase the weight load to build power.”

1. Stand with one foot in front of the other. Keep your back heel high.
2. Hold a medium-sized dumbbell in hand (same side as your back leg).
3. Sit back as you lower the dumbbell to the floor.
4. Exhale and stand tall as you bring the dumbbell into a bicep curl in a strong, sharp motion.
5. Press the weight up toward the ceiling.
6. Lower the dumbbell, slowly and controlled.

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Internal Rotation Chop

This exercise will help you turn your upper body throughout the day.

“I love this one as it’s functional core training, so you are targeting your abdominals through rotational patterns we do all day long. We are also driving internal rotation into the front hip to open up our hip mobility, reducing tightness in the hips,” Says Antonietta

1. Begin in the stance above, again reaching a mid-size weight to the outer side of your front thigh, in a motion like fastening your seat belt.
2. Gently press your hips back as you turn your chest and keep your back straight.
3. Stand tall as you bring the dumbbell over the opposing shoulder and turn your torso, similar to throwing a duffle bag over your shoulder.
4. Exhale as you turn.

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Farmers Carry

This exercise is helpful when it comes to carrying grocery bags, luggage, a pet, or even a grandchild.

“The farmers carry is training our grip strength, overall strength and muscle mass, and core stability, which directly correlates to our functional independence as we get older,” Antonietta tells us.

1. Hold a heavy dumbbell or kettlebell in each hand at your sides.
2. Start walking forward, then backward.
3. Your torso should be kept still while walking. Do not move your trunk as you brace your core.
4. Women should work 75% of their body weight evenly between each hand for 1 minute.

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Planks

Planks will help you catch yourself from a fall, crawl on the ground to get something under a table, or push yourself up when lying on a surface.

“Planks are such a full-body exercise and recruit every single muscle in the body and indicate that we can hold our own body weight. I also love that there are endless variations here to keep things interesting. Last, loading through the bones of the upper body in this position helps to maintain their density, as all weight bearing activities stimulate bone growth,” Antonietta says.

1. Start in a pushup position with your body forming a straight head-to-toe line. Hands should be placed under your shoulders.
2. Engage your core as you brace your abdominals and hold the plank position.

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Single-Leg Deadlift

The single-leg deadlift strengthens your balance.6254a4d1642c605c54bf1cab17d50f1e

“Even in its most basic form, we are shifting from leg to leg when walking so balance translates to us being able to move around in later years!” explains Antonietta. “This is an excellent exercise that builds stability to help us have better control of our bodies and prevent debilitating falls.”

1. Hold a heavy dumbbell in each hand as you shift your body weight to one leg.
2. Keep a slight bend in your standing knee.
3. Bring the opposite leg behind you and lower the dumbbell, keeping your lower back, shoulders, and hips straight as you do so.
4. Return to a standing position.

Alexa Mellardo