What is functional training?

Injury Recovery, Lifestyle Activity, and Athletism & Functional Training Exercise

Functional training focuses on the development and/or rehabilitation of core stability, balance, proprioceptive responses, and ultimately movement efficiency. Generally traditional bodybuilding exercise directs its focus primarily on the major muscle groups. In functional training the body is viewed more as a synergistic unit than individual muscles. Without muscular balance and core integrity the risk of injury when performing routine movements is greatly increased.

There are cosmetic benefits of either type of training; improved quality of life and enhanced general, occupational, or sports specific movement efficiency is the goal of functional training. Functional training improves several factors affecting human performance. Whether you are improving upon specific skills, such as in golf or tennis or conditioning your body to handle performance issues related to injury recovery or work stress and physicality, we are prepared to develop individual functional fitness programming to suit your long term needs. Typically, personal trainers and gym "gurus" teach folks how to exercise using only aspects of traditional exercise. For example, you may be familiar with the "biceps curl", "triceps extensions", and "abdominal crunch" exercises…but, are these exercises helping you in your everyday activities – more importantly, your lifestyle activities? From day to day you might lift a 30-pound suitcase or if you travel a lot you may be loading roughly the same weight into an overhead storage space on an airplane...and "throw your back out". Why do you think you may experience symptoms of back pain or strain? It is likely; you may not be including "functional fitness" exercises into your fitness program.

You might have toned arms, a tighter tush, but are you ready to lift your child from an awkward position out of his car seat or hoist the Costco box of printer paper off the top storage shelf at the office? If you’ve experienced that stabbing pain in your back or legs…chances are the "show me" muscles you’ve been working on are actually doing you little "functional" good.

Admittedly, functional fitness and functional exercise are buzzwords in our industry. However, these valuable fundamentals in fitness programming focus on building a body to improve its ability to strengthen the process of movement. In functional fitness programming we train movement not the muscles of the body. We put your body in an environment of less stability and concentrate specifically on movement. We want you to be capable of accepting real-life activities in real-life positions, not just lifting x amount of weight in an "idealized" posture created by a gym machine or other standard piece of fitness equipment.

Unity of muscle force and stability in movement: Our message is that traditional, or "bodybuilding", weight training isolates muscle groups, however traditional bodybuilding exercise does not train your isolated muscle groups to work with absolute unity. Imagine sitting on a bench performing biceps curls with dumbbells…now think…What is really working? Perhaps you feel the muscles of your arm working? Can you feel your midsection working? Probably not. Do you feel it is difficult to balance your seated position on the bench? Is your heart really working? Do you think building the biceps muscles will help you to negotiate the movements described above as related to pulling or pushing overhead in an awkward position? O.K. I think you get the idea.

Now, imagine building your body with more complete, total body, exercises designed to make your entire body strong. Imagine not experiencing pain in your legs or low back during simple movements of everyday life. The basis in functional exercise is integration. Simply adding key functional exercises to your exercise program, within the scope of your lifestyle, limitations, and fitness goals, it's about training all the muscles to work together instead of isolating them to work independently as most "bodybuilding" programs encourage. This is functional fitness!

Perhaps you can imagine a movement central to your lifestyle and common activities…imagine that you are an avid gardener…In what position do you normally find yourself? Most of us would find ourselves in a bent-over, or kneeling position, with our arms extended pulling or lifting, right? Now, imagine the standby exercise you will see often in a health club for increasing back strength: the seated row, where a person sits in a chair with your chest pressed against pads, and you pull two levers back. You may be exercising your larger, more apparent, muscles, but your body's not learning anything, because you don't have to activate your core stabilizer muscles – the muscles of the low back and abdominals - or the stabilizers of your arms and shoulders. The machine is taking the entire "functional" component to your exercise out of the experience.

In functional fitness exercise, most of the time, you should be standing on your own feet and supporting your own weight while exercising or utilizing elements of balance training with the use of core boards, stability balls, foam rollers, and air pillows along with a plethora of newer pieces of functional training equipment.

Understanding exercise modality:

Getting started with functional fitness exercise is not a breeze. Make sure you begin by gaining the qualified perspective of a skilled personal fitness trainer well educated in functional fitness programming. Your trainer should have several years of practical experience working with folks of your age and like demographics. Beginning functional exercise you will most likely start by learning the principles of core strengthening, balance, and coordination exercises. Your personal trainer will likely start you off with simple body-weight only exercises and will progress your program experimenting with exercise modality based on your progress and limitations. Remember, you won’t be doing a lot of the exercises you see folks in gyms and health clubs performing – you will however, be progressing much faster, safer, and in a more long-term manor. Many of these folks could lie down on a gym leg-press machine and press hundreds of pounds; however, they do not have the core muscular control for a one-legged squat because they do not have the strength in stability or the concentrated ability of major and minor muscle groups working together. In terms of your activities of daily living you might consider the value of this distinct difference when you walk down steps or reach up to get something out of a high cabinet balanced on one leg; a lot of you may experience pronounced pain or at least remarkable weakness.

Our first step as personal trainers experienced in functional fitness training is to train your body to control and balance its own weight. Starting with simple movements, like modified squatting, and other balance exercises, possibly using some of the above mentioned equipment. Other popular tools that promote functional exercise are things like stability balls and core boards, wobble boards, and balance boards, all of which force you to work your core to keep your body balanced while you're lifting a weight. There are a few simple at home exercises one might try (provided you are not limited in any way), like standing on one leg on a 6-8 inch step, then lower the heel of your other foot to the ground, while controlling your body weight as you go down and back up. Switch sides during each maneuver to promote balance and muscle integration on either side of your body. Once you can control and balance your own body weight, then you can start working with progressive weights. Of course your exercise should progress in a very systematic and safe way…your personal trainer will challenge you slowly and experiment with exercise modality in a smooth and predictable manor.

So...should you quit using weight machines at the gym for a program that's all about functional training, free weights, and balance training? No, of course not. We think of functional training as a tool to address additional components of total body fitness training. If your muscles are weak then you certainly will fail with almost any activity; your training should consist of natural movement, functional, flexibility, as well as traditional exercises. If you blend exercise modalities together, functional exercises train isolated muscles to work in concert with all muscle in movement excellence.

Moving into functional exercise may be intimidating for some people used to working on machines alone: It does require specific guidance and is more difficult to learn proper form. Functional exercise can be more neurologically challenging and demanding than traditional health club machine exercises, you will not perform functional exercise with the same levels of intensity and short rest periods as with health club machine exercises, unlike traditional weightlifting on machines, with functional exercise, you will exercise until you have broken the strictness of your form and your entire body is challenged and fatigued.

Need to get started?

With all said, please always consult your doctor before beginning a new exercise program. Functional fitness programming can be fun and extremely beneficial to most of the population, however, if you have limitations related to bone, joint, connective tissue, or degenerative diseases, and others, your doctor can best describe your limitations. Simply relay your specific limitations as described by your doctor to your personal trainer for the safest most beneficial exercise program.