4. Target All Major Muscle Groups Through Functional Training Exercises

How to make sure that our workout targets all the major muscle groups in our body? The answer is: by incorporating functional training exercises.

Most popular approach followed is to categorize different exercises based on the muscles they target and then select a few for each muscle group. There are a number of ways proposed to divide our body’s major muscle groups; we propose to divide them into
1. Shoulders
2. Chest
3. Arms (Biceps and Triceps)
4. Abdomen
5. Upper back
6. Lower back and glutes
7. Legs (Quads, hamstrings and calves)

For someone who does not have a degree in exercise science it will be quite difficult to precisely know which exercise targets which muscle group. To complicate things further, many exercises, as we will learn later, target multiple muscle groups and to varied degrees. Therefore this approach of splitting workout by muscle groups and making sure we target each muscle group is too cumbersome for most of us.

A simpler and better approach is to design workout around functional training exercises. Functional training involves performing exercises based on the basic functional movements that our human body needs to perform to carry out daily activities.

Imagine the old times before prehistory, when we did not have machines. Humans at that time had strong athletic bodies, just because we used to use our bodies to carry out our daily chores. Nature has designed our body to be athletic and function smoothly in order to perform tasks necessary for survival. It is the unnatural routines of modern life such as sitting all day in front of a computer, which cause muscle weakness and poor posture. On performing functional training exercises, our body will automatically become athletic. There are eight functional movements that we recommend one should include in their workout, these are
1. Vertical Pushing
2. Vertical Pulling
3. Horizontal Pushing
4. Horizontal Pulling
5. Squatting
6. Bending pull (To pick an object from the ground)
7. Bending push (Slamming an object into the ground)

If we ensure that we are including all of these 8 functional movements in our workout then our workout program is going to be well balanced. We then do not have to worry if we missed any muscle group in our workout.

Knowing functional movements is all the information you need to create a balanced workout, however for those curious types who are interested in learning which movement affects which body part, here are the details:
Pushing vertical targets shoulders and arms
Pushing horizontal targets chest and arms
Pulling Vertical targets Upper back and arms
Pulling Horizontal targets Mid Back and Arms
Squatting targets Legs and Glutes
Bending to pull targets legs, lower back and glutes
Bending to push targets the abdomen
Twisting targets obliques in the abdomen.
As you can see by performing all of these movements one can target all major muscle groups in their body.

Lately there has been a lot of buzz around training the core. As you would have noticed, we did not talk about the core here. Many of us associate the core with our abdominals, however that is far from true. Core is not a muscle group as many of us think. Thinking in terms of muscles groups then core will pretty much constitute all the muscles of our body barring our arms and legs. To really understand core, you must understand that for human body, arms and legs are the primary movers for moving any object, while all the force needed to move these objects comes from our core. So when we say we want to strengthen our core, it means that we are optimizing the force we can generate through our body and at the same time making our whole body robust to withstand heavy stresses it experiences during that process.

Since the exercises we will do are all functional training exercises, they will highly tax our core and in the process make it strong. No separate exercises will be needed for building a strong core.

To summarize, creating a workout based on the basic functional movements of our body is far simpler than splitting workout based on muscle groups and will provide better overall results.

This concludes our video, for next week, we will go over some of the best exercises associated with each of these basic functional movements. Including some variation of these exercises is a must if you are really serious about becoming strong and athletic.
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[jollygoodyo]

If I may add one thing that's missing...Aerobic and anaerobic exercises. Humans were evolved to walk/run/jog before lifting weights. We had to kill the wilderbeast first before carrying it back to the cave.

[satyahsukhda]

Great information. Primal exercises are all about promoting proper function and muscle balance.

[normapadro]

I use a pull and push training. For my lower body I use my stationary bike. I've been losing a lot of weight and size too.

[me_hanics]

Weirdly, but I used great upperbody and lower body exercises in my workouts that I seemed to notice after some time I don't even need to train my abs, they just kept getting stronger with these. Now that explains it. Great video, I actually am implementing this in my workout! Also subbed.

for past one year I have always done my workouts super-setting opposite muscle groups.
for example, I always do chest presses followed by a sort of rows. biceps and triceps, shoulder and lats (or also chest and lats), face pull and straight lat pull down. actually I never do just one exercise. even if I do a heavy compound move like dead-lift or squat, I complete that with an ab workout, dips or push-ups. and this way I almost perform between 30 to 40 sets in a training session under an hour with maximal effort and efficiency. well I like it this way and I like it when I get heart rate goes up. so I do less cardio, even if I do it'll be HIIT in form of stair climbing and less than 10 minutes :) My resting heartbeat is less than 50, sometimes 45, I am not that muscular but people definitely notice that I do workout and they point that out!
so I guess super-setting opposite muscle groups is one of the best ways that make sure you train all your muscles and balance everything out and spend less time in the gym and get better cardio benefit.

[malcolmxraw]

Functional isolation workouts include neck, hands, forearms, feet and calves

[dogeatinghomework]

horizontal pulling targets the upper back more and vertical pulling targets the mid back more contrary to the info given in this vid. Think of the greater trapezius and rhomboid contraction when performing a row over a pull up, and the greater latissimus dorsi activation when performing the pull up. It would be worth correcting this mistake for the sake of not miss-educating viewers. Other than that, good video.

[HunterGamesLetsplay]

i want to build a body naturally without any weights because if your body is only used to weights when you are trying to actually perform your body will become stiff because you wont have complete control of your body calisthenics seem like a better option than weights

[redplanet]

Also the early humans were fitter and stronger because they didn't have Pizza and wine and they didn't sit around watching Netflix all day

[rdgvnn]

Military press
Pull ups
Bench press
Rows
Squat
Deadlift
Crunches
Twists

[subaschandran]

Well said.. Illustration need picture support.. Your vocal statement showing should since with visuals.. All the best

[sachinpandit]

Great info thanks for giving guidence on fitness.

[JasonNahRealFitSG]

Some good ideas but the movements are very linear

Functional also means being able to change directions & accelerate & decelerate easily. Training with those movements also are important. Think this is grossly overlooked by many people. How can u be functional when the human body changes direction all e time but training & exercise is mostly moving in 1 plane of motion?

[erichvonmolder]

So if you sit for a living, functional training then should be something associated with sitting or office work and thus, design functional training exercises. If you are a UPS Driver, then appropriate functional training should then apply to that job because that is what you do 10 hours a day and so on.

[unknowingknowing]

Personally speaking I choose at least 2-3 exercises to target the certain muscle that I want to hit.

[PriyanshuChauhan]

No transverse plane movements ?
add some kettlebell/clubbell swings

[KUNAL]

Are those 8 exercises in Proper seriel?
As you have described those exercises in different order in other video.

[trentongraham]

So Tarzan is what we can become if we where like early humans

[nachiketkamble]

can you tell me the routine of compound exercises from Sunday to saturday? e.g which compound movements I should do on Monday?

[jadonmuller]

Okay but if i wanna train my shoulders, this one vertical push exerciceis not enough to let them grow. Same for the Arms, one horizontal exercice like benchpress is not enough to let my Trizeps grow. Please help