What Are CrossFit Functional Movements and Why Should You Care?

As soon as you start learning about CrossFit exercises, you start hearing about CrossFit Functional Movements. But what are they, and why should you care?

Functional movements are the types of things you do every day — the moves you make in your everyday life, like carrying children, pushing a wheelbarrow, lifting a box.

CrossFit Functional Movements take these everyday activities and turn them into a core strength and conditioning program. CrossFit's training manual describes itself as "constantly varied functional movements performed at high intensity."

From a technical perspective, functional movements are universal motor recruitment patterns. When you use them, they invoke a muscular contraction from core to extremity. Functional movements are multi-joint movements, or compound movements, expected to naturally and efficiently move the body and other objects effectively.

The Functional Movements include activities like: Squatting, Running, Jumping, Throwing, Pulling, and Picking Things Up.

CrossFit functional movements don't focus on one part of overall fitness — strength OR stamina. Instead, the CrossFit exercises address your strength AND stamina, as well as the other fitness domains, which include cardiovascular and respiratory endurance, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy.

Nine foundational CrossFit exercises include: The Air Squat, Front Squat, Overhead Squat, Shoulder Press, Push Press, Push Jerk, Deadlift, Sumo Deadlift High Pull, and Medicine Ball Clean.

If you are new to CrossFit or even if you have been doing it for a while, we cannot emphasize enough how important it is for you to have proper form when you undertake these exercises. Start with no weights as you perfect the form and work your way up. Better yet, consider personal training for CrossFit to ensure that you have the form perfected before you graduate to higher weight or more intensity.

CrossFit functional movements are movements that your body was designed to do, performed at high intensity, and producing a lot of power. When you get stronger doing CrossFit exercises, you improve how you do things in the real world.