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Functional training.

Functional training at its most basic level means “exercising with a high movement level” . It requires moving along all planes of motion and combining different movement patterns in order to replicate ‘real life’ everyday movement. A true functional exerciser is looking to move away from the conforms of traditional weight lifting exercises and machines towards replicating what they enjoy doing outside of the gym.

Take Kasia and Jan Kowalski. Kasia is a restaurant manager and loves to dance salsa. Jan is a lawyer, but fancies himself as Poland’s answer to Tiger Woods. They both enjoy the gym, their hobbies and would like to lose some weight, but now their progress has plateaud. When looking at their workout routine you can see that Kasia relies on the cross-trainer /treadmill and occasionally performs a few lunges and abdominal crunches. Jan on the other hand heads straight to the resistance machines to bash out some quick reps and then some bicep curls to impress Kasia, who is watching from the treadmill.

I would ask them both this question: “what is your training functional for?”. Now this is probably a confusing question, but if you start seeing the gym or any other form of exercise as a way of improving your hobbies and daily activities, you can see how most old methods of resistance and flat-rate cardio exercise are becoming redundant. In reality what is 1 hour of cardio and some crunches going to do to help Kasia during her long hours of work at the restaurant and her dancing, and what is sitting on machines, lifting weights going to do to protect Jan from the postural issues related to sitting behind a desk for 30 years or improve his golf swing? The answer is... not allot.

Key areas for Kasia are correcting her posture so that she can move comfortably around the restaurant floor and the dance floor alike; improve her core strength, balance and work on improving endurance. She relies heavily on her ability to move her legs in multiple directions. Therefore, running or cross-training are not the most useful exercise for her and we should be looking to implement more dynamic, multi-directional exercises to address these needs.

Key areas for Jan are improving posture as a result of his desk job, which will make him more comfortable at work and allow us to concentrate on his golf swing. Jan’s body twists and bends in multiple ways when he swings at a golf ball, so we can look to specifically training him for these types of movement which his body performs on the golf course. In short, a seated chest press does not translate into his life well. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t train for larger, stronger more defined chests, but I would advise him that incorporating a chest exercise with a balance exercise and working more specifically with exercises simulating a golf swing would enable him to build a muscle, burn fat, get a nicer physique and improve his golf swing.

Even without specific areas to address, increasing the number of exercises in your routine which use more than one muscle group, joints and planes of motion will provide several significant benefits:
- Increase in volume and intensity of workouts, leading to more efficient cardiovascular function, muscular conditioning and fat loss.
- Increased number of neuro-muscular pathways making muscle response that much quicker and co-ordination easier.
- Stronger core (any muscle attached to the spine) and abdominals, which translates into all aspects of life.
- Preparing your body in this way will dramatically reduce the risk of injury.

Healthy Wishes
Andy Mars
Personal Trainer

1) Rob Orr; The Functional Continuum 25 Oct 2009