By James Fantone
NYC Personal Trainer

My favorite functional exercise is The Push up! Once you’ve mastered the stability of the Push up, you can move into so many functional training options safely. You can do mountain climbers, bear crawls, incline push ups and much more. Learn perfect Push up form and conquer the world!

FUNCTION: (Wikipedia)

In engineering, a function is interpreted as a specific process, action or task that a system is able to perform.

SYSTEM: (Wikipedia)

Is a set of interacting or interdependent components forming an integrated whole.

Ahhh Functional Training! So here we are Functional Integrative Training, my specialty. Let’s look at a typical functional exercise; the Push-up.

The push-up is a great example of a functional exercise.  If you’ve ever gotten up off of the floor, you’ve done one.  Now we’ll learn the proper form.

This could be considered a perfect push-up because my body is held in a straight “plank” which is controlled by my transverse abdominals.  I’m only bending my arms a little, but my core is strong. The problem most people have with a push-up is they try to go too low, too soon.  Let your strength build up first by doing half push-ups. And don’t let anyone tell you that girly push-ups are just as good. They are not. Even if you don’t bend your arms at all, you are better off with your knees off of the floor. Then you are still using you core to its full potential and strengthening your chest/shoulder/tricep connection.  Push-ups work everything!  It’s a symphony of isometric contractions all orchestrated by your brilliant brain!