A few sets on the leg curl machine might boost your heart rate, but will you enjoy them? Probably not.
Luckily for strength-training haters, an increasing number of gyms are adding gear for a new type of workout—called functional or playground fitness—that’s designed to be more effective than your typical routine—and way more fun.
Because machines at the gym isolate individual body parts, they’re not the ideal training for real-life situations—like sprinting to a bus with a heavy bag of groceries. Worse yet: “People are bored to death by isolated movements,” says Jon Hinds, founder of Monkey Bar Gymnasiums. “It’s become a chore.”
Functional fitness, on the other hand, involves more intuitive, dynamic movements like running, jumping, crawling, and climbing. With this new kind of workout, fitness isn’t the main goal, but the byproduct of the activity, says David Jack, a performance coach and the director of Teamworks Fitness. The result: a more athletic body that won’t leave you feeling surprisingly weak when it comes time to push a shopping cart or lift a heavy box.
While you can use your environment to get a functional workout anywhere (park benches are awesome for jumping over or climbing under, for example), special “playground” equipment is showing up at more and more gyms.
No clue how to use them? Just try one of the new exercises in the below slideshow. Do whichever combination of moves you prefer for 10 minutes twice a week, and focus on the freedom of movement, suggests Jack.
8 Super-Effective Functional Fitness Exercises
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