Most of us exercise because we want to shed weight, build muscle mass, or tone our physique. These are all great reasons to hit the gym, however, there’s another benefit to sticking to a fitness routine. You see, certain types of exercises can also improve the way you move around your day, help you maintain proper posture and reduce the risk of injuries. What am I talking about? Well, the name for it is functional training.
Functional training can help you increase your flexibility, mobility, stability, and strength and thus become better at life. It involves exercises that train the body to be more efficient in performing daily activities such as walking, running, climbing up the stairs, pushing, lifting things up and various sports. With the increasing popularity of functional training, many gyms now feature versatile functional fitness rigs where people can perform unique and exciting workouts using simple, natural movements.
The typical functional training rig consists of metal structures that resemble scaffolding. This gives people a secure base for safely performing a variety of exercises. A single rig can be used by up to 10 or 15 people at the same time, which makes it a valuable investment for a gym. As they are modular, functional training rigs can be completely customized to meet the needs for different gym-goers. Besides allowing you to create a rig for workouts with different intensities, the modular design also makes this piece of equipment easier to take apart and store when you need to maximise space.
The most common features of a functional training rig are pull up bars, spotter arms, monkey bars/wings, and j hooks. Pull up bars are essential for many functional exercises that involve pulling up motions. They form the frame of the rigs on which other accessories are attached. Monkey bars allow performing hanging exercise progressions for improving your grip, core and lat strength. J hooks are used to efficiently and safely perform squats, front squats, and any shoulder to overhead presses or jerks. Spotter arms are a great safety feature that can be used when a coach isn’t available to spot people exercising.
The gyms that invest in functional fitness rigs can expect to increase their client base. Fitness experts and physical therapists usually recommend functional training to seniors, pregnant women and people recovering from an injury or an illness. As this type of training does not push the body to its limits, but rather gradually helps increase performance, it’s a great replacement for standard endurance or strength exercises. So, by adding functional fitness rigs, you’re essentially opening up your gym to all groups of people.
