Reasons to love these multi-tasking machines.
A functional trainer is basically a Swiss Army knife for your home gym. Two adjustable cable columns, a weight stack (or two), and endless exercise options packed into one footprint. You can push, pull, rotate, and press from any angle, which means you're training movement patterns your body actually uses outside the gym.
If you've been eyeing a functional trainer but aren't sure if it's worth the floor space, here are five solid reasons to pull the trigger.
1. Build Strength That Matches (or Beats) Traditional Machines
Research shows that using a cable-based functional trainer will snag you strength gains comparable to traditional resistance machines whether you're young or old. But one crucial difference is you're building that strength through movement patterns that look more like real life and sport.
Functional training programs have been shown to improve overall physical fitness including speed, endurance, flexibility, power, and aerobic capacity more than traditional programs that use isolated exercises.
The adjustable pulleys let you load movements from any height and angle. Want to train a rotational chop for golf? Done. Need to strengthen your shoulder through a full range of motion after an injury? You can dial in exactly the path and resistance that works for you without tweaking it again.
Read more: The Athena Attachment: The Best Side-Mount Functional Trainer for Your Gym
2. Improve Movement Quality and Reduce Injury Risk
This probably sounds obvious, but programs built around functional movement patterns work wonders for improving Functional Movement Screen (FMS) scores, which measure things like core stability, rotary stability, and dynamic control. For comparison, traditional machine-focused training typically shows little change in these areas since they don't hit all the angles and planes of motion that functional trainers can.
If you're wondering why that matters, better FMS scores are linked with lower injury risk in athletes, dancers, and anyone putting their body through demanding activities. Functional training helps you move better, which helps you stay in the game longer.
Cables also provide a unique training stimulus. You're working against resistance while also stabilizing your body in space. Your core has to fire to keep you balanced, and smaller stabilizer muscles get recruited along with the big movers.
3. Carry Over Strength to Daily Life and Sport
Building muscle is great, but can you actually use that strength when it counts? Research shows that task-specific functional training leads to greater improvements in gait speed, timed up-and-go tests, and real-world task performance compared to traditional machines.
Training a specific movement makes that movement better (duh). For sports that require you to move quickly and rotate your body, like tennis, research shows using functional training that matches how you move helps you play better than just doing traditional weight training.
For older adults, this means exercises that mimic sit-to-stand and walking helps make daily activities easier. For athletes, it means training rotations, pushes, and pulls in positions that match their sport. For everyone else, it means the strength you build in the gym actually shows up when you're hauling groceries or wrestling luggage into an overhead bin.
4. Safer Training with Guided Resistance
Free weights are fantastic, but they're not forgiving if your form breaks down under fatigue. Cable machines offer a middle ground because you get free-form resistance through natural movement paths, but with lower injury risk than barbells and dumbbells.
This makes functional trainers especially useful for beginners learning movement patterns, older adults who want effective resistance training with a safety net, and anyone rehabbing an injury who needs controlled, adjustable resistance. You can also train to failure with less worry about dropping weight or getting pinned.
Cable and weight-stack exercise machines have been around for a long time because people like that you can easily change the resistance, they are safe to use, and they are simple to operate. There's a reason gyms have been built around cable machines for decades.
5. Maximum Versatility in Minimum Space
A well-designed functional trainer can replace a dozen single-purpose machines. Cable flyes, lat pulldowns, tricep pushdowns, face pulls, cable rows, woodchops, Pallof presses, cable curls, and about a hundred other exercises all happen in one station.
Options like the Ares 2.0, Athena, and Arcadia Max pack serious capability into a home gym footprint. Wall-mounted versions like the Ares 2.0 Wall Mounted save even more floor space while still giving you full cable functionality.
The pulley height adjustments mean you can train muscles through their full range and from angles that fixed machines can't reach. Switching between exercises is fast, so you can keep rest periods tight or superset movements without wandering across the gym floor.
Read more: What is the Ares™ Cable Machine?
Takeaway
A functional trainer will get you real strength gains, better movement quality, and direct carryover to the activities that matter outside the gym. Add in the safety benefits of guided cable resistance and the ability to do dozens of exercises in one spot, and you've got a compelling case for making it the centerpiece of your training setup.
Rachel MacPherson is a certified strength and conditioning specialist with over a decade of coaching experience. She specializes in helping women build strength and confidence through evidence based training.
This article was reviewed by Ashley Boyer, ACE-CPT, for accuracy.
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