The secret moves every workout routine needs

Do you struggle to drag yourself from the couch or groan when the elevator ‘out of order’ sign means you’re taking the stairs? Functional fitness makes these little tests of strength or endurance an absolute breeze.

Okay, so ‘functional exercises’ don’t sound like the most exciting thing in the world, but trust us: these power-packed moves will give your workouts and everyday life a serious boost – and they're a favorite of our founder, Chris Hemsworth.

Centr expert Da Rulk's Raw Functional Training breaks down the movement patterns of everyday activities into targeted, honed exercises and it has benefits for the rest of your workouts, too. If you spend all day at a desk and then try to jump straight into high-intensity resistance exercises, there’s a higher risk of injury if your body isn’t functionally strong. These moves help get you there.

Taking key moves from Rulk, here are three ways regular functional exercise can make your daily life a whole lot better.

1. You can manage a little more heavy lifting

Unless you have an active job, you might not think you have a lot of physical challenges outside of your workouts. But think about mowing the lawn, weekend DIYing or helping Andy next door move his new fridge in. You might have even pulled a muscle trying to do this stuff before. That’s because these actions involve big movement patterns, and need certain levels of cardio fitness and strength.

Fortunately for you, functional training uses compound exercises (exercises that use more than one muscle group and joint at a time), which help to build all-over, everyday strength.

Da Rulk's classic side gorillas improve hip mobility while engaging the arms, legs, shoulders and core: essentially, all the muscle groups you engage to lift and move heavy objects off the ground, safely.

These moves make you better at pulling and pushing heavy objects while maintaining stability and engaging your core, so you don’t damage your back or shoulders.

Da Rulk focuses on those exact movement patterns of everyday life and breaks them down into the most efficient exercises possible.

2. You can get low

If hauling yourself off the couch or out of bed feels like a mammoth effort, or squatting to pick things up from the ground is a major inconvenience, you probably need a little functional training.

Most of us spend a good portion of our days sitting. Maybe our main exercise is just a bit of steady-state cardio now and then. Unfortunately, that’s not enough to maintain ideal mobility. Functional exercises help to develop a full range of motion.

Let's go back to getting up off the couch. Da Rulk has a great exercise that can help, although you might be cursing his name while you do it! But the more you strengthen those glutes, the more power you engage from your posterior chain to drive yourself up with ease.

Learning how to do Rulk's hostages exercise correctly will set you up for his full Raw Functional Training arsenal.

By focusing on that part of a squat – parallel to the floor and below – you are training the lower range of motion in your squat. Work on those muscles, and you’ll notice the difference next time you crouch or climb stairs.

3. You can move up, down, all around

It would be super boring if everyday life was just forward and backward. We move sideways, we rotate our bodies to look behind us or to change direction, and we twist and turn without a second thought in everyday activities. Now think of all the times you pulled a muscle or lost your balance when you were trying to do something mundane like reach behind you or dodge an uneven sidewalk.

Functional training includes multidirectional movements, putting an emphasis on our core muscles as well as various stabilizing muscles to promote the flexibility and agility to move freely in daily life on all directional planes.

Switches, and those side gorillas we looked at earlier, are great moves for multidirectional mobility – and the kind of fancy footwork that keeps your mind engaged too.

Want to put it all together to maximise your functional fitness? Start your free trial with Centr to take on Da Rulk's workouts, or our 6-week Functional Movement Challenge.