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By Liz, December 31, 2009 5:11 pm

Hey guys! Happy New Year’s Eve! I sure I’m not alone when I say that I have no idea where this year has gone!

Before I get going on my topic for this post, I wanted to take a moment to remember some of the cool stuff that has happened this year.

• Moved into an awesome new house with awesome roommates
• Got accepted to Humboldt State University (this is actually very recent. I just got accepted last week!)
• Had an amazing and injury free cross country season
• Turned 21 last January!!
• Started this blog in August
• Deepened my relationships with my family, boyfriend and friends
• Got 4.0s two semesters in a row!
• ….and there is more, but these are a few of the nice things that happened.

Of course, there were some down moments this year, but all in all, 2009 was good to me.

And 2010 is shaping up to be an interesting year. It will be full of change, that I know. Humboldt State is about 10 hours away from my home (CA is a biggggg state!). I will be starting a new school, making new friends, living in a new place and getting a new job. Scary…but exciting. I know it will be a huge stepping stone towards my future aspirations and goals. Yay!

Now, I only have one resolution this year, and that is to stay level headed and calm through all the changes that await me. Let’s hope I can achieve that!

Okay, so now that all the end of year stuff is out of the way, let’s get onto the topic of the day: Functional Weight Lifting.

Functional fitness is all about training your body as a whole, instead of doing isolation exercises, such as bicep curls or tricep kickbacks. I am a huge fan of these types of exercises, especially after reading this and this book. The New Rules of Lifting is a book that I highly recommend. It’s a great resource, check it out!

There are a few reasons why I think functional fitness is the best way to weight train.

1. It trains your body for real-life movements, thus making your strength more than just looking good, but being good at things too!
2. It’s more effective because your training muscles the way they’re meant to be used.
3. Functional fitness trainslarger muscle groups together, giving you more power with each movement and recruiting the smaller muscles to assist and grow, too.
4. It’s more efficientin the gym time-wise because you are integrating more muscles into each exercise as opposed to doing multiple exercises for many isolated muscles, which takes a lot of time.
5. It’s fun!

I’ve noticed through the months I’ve been doing functional strength exercises that all my muscles are noticeably bigger (in a good way!), I’m stronger and I am better at doing everyday tasks, like lifting a heavy box or carrying something heavy up stairs, etc. There is definitely something to it!

As noted in The New Rules of Lifting, there are 7 main movementsour bodies are meant to perform: Squatting, deadlifting, lunging, pushing, pulling, twisting and walking/running. I completely agree. I do all these movements multiple times a day. So wouldn’t it make sense to strengthen the body to perform these tasks and make them easier? I think so!

Here are some examples of exercises I do to within each category:

1. Squatting: squats on the bosu ball (standing on the black platform) w/ dumbells, squats on the rack, standing squats with dumbells, squat with heels raised, front squat
2. Deadlift:a classic deadlift with olympic bar, back extensions, good mornings
3. Lunging:static lunges w/dumbells, dynamic lunges holding a medicine ball with a twist, split squats, step-ups
4. Pushing: pushups, bench press, benchpress on a pilates ball w/ dumbells, dips, shoulder press
5. Pulling:bent-over rows, seated rows on the cable machine, lat pulldowns, pull-ups (I do assisted pullups)
6. Twisting(aka, Ab work): russian twists, prone jack knifes, crunches on pilates ball, planks (aren’t a twist but are still good), wood chops with cable
7. And I think walking and runningis pretty self explanatory

These are just some examples of exercises, and I’m sure there are more. I say, the rule of thumb is, when you’re doing an exersice, ask yourself how this correlates into a real life movement. If it doesn’t, then it probably isn’t the best exercise to do.

And here is a sample workout. This is what I did today:

• 10 minute warm-up on the elliptical
• 3 set of 10 reps deadlift with 1 minute rest in between
• alternating sets: 3sets x 10 reps each leg dynamic lunges with medicine ball and a twist and3×10 pushups
• alternating sets: 3 sets of 10 reps of lat pulldowns and  3×10 wood chops
• 3sets of 20 reps prone jack knife
• 20 minutes (1000m) swimming

I try to always work quickly between each exercise, giving my self just enough rest to not die , to keep my heart rate up and get a good sweat going. It was a killer workout today!

And, if you are really intrigued by the whole functional fitness thing, I seriously recommend checking out those books. They go way more in depth than what I’ve just written. This was kinda like Functional Fitness 101.

I hope y’all enjoyed reading about what I do to keep my muscles pumped! And, sorry for the lack of pictures recently. I’ll leave you with my yummylicious breakfast I had this morning. I should actually call this my crack-meal of the week, because I have been obsessed with this combo.

Sweet potatoes baked at 425 degrees, tossed with cumin, salt and pepper. Coated with olive oil after baking.

2 eggs, scrambled, with green onions and spinach, salt/pepper and salsa verde.

Have a fun and safe New Year’s Eve tonight. Seriously guys, make sure you have a DD! See you in the new year!!

***Disclaimer: I am not a personal trainer, nor do I have a degree in Exercise Science. The about commentary on Functional Fitness in solely based on my own research and opinion.***