Unless you have been living in a cave for the past few years you cannot have failed to have heard the term “functional fitness”. It has become the new “Holy Grail” of fitness. Every exercise is scrutinised for its “functional” significance, each new training aid promises the ultimate in “functional” training and every trainer on the planet is focused on ensuring their clients are training in a “functional” way.

But what does functional training really mean? Each week I am reminded of functional training and its relevance in everyday life to real people. A brief analysis of some typical exercisers will reveal very differing requirements from a “functional training” approach. In this scenario let us picture the athletic rugby player, his wife (and new mum), her mother (who has just had a hip replacement) and the nurse who has assisted them all at some point.

The rugby player will undoubtedly need strength and power; he will need speed and agility with the ability to control acceleration and deceleration and changing direction. He will need rotational power and core stability and he needs to be able to get back onto his feet quickly if he’s knocked to the ground.

His wife, and new mum, wants to get her figure back but should this be her number one priority? A functional approach will address the physical demands of caring for a baby. She needs the muscular strength and endurance to lift, carry and hold her newborn baby for much of the day without injury or strain. Whilst muscle imbalances resulting from the forward pull of her growing abdomen in pregnancy will still be evident.

Her mother’s training has to address the rehabilitation aspects of hip surgery to bring about a return to full functional movement. Postural changes may have occurred prior to surgery if the “good” hip was subject to increased loading. Muscular atrophy and imbalances are almost certainly going to be an issue. Improving the quality of her day-to-day life through intelligent functional training approaches should be the priority.

The nurse finds the physical demands of work leave her aching and tired at the end of each shift. Strength is important to her as are exercises that mimic lifting. Increasing flexibility, core stabilisation and spinal rotation will allow her to treat patients in a variety of different positions and decrease the risk of injury to herself.

So identifying meaningful functional training for these four people requires careful analysis of their daily lives. Plyometric split squats and rotational lunges will be great for the rugby player but are unlikely to have “functional” relevance for the other three or, at least, there are other functional movements which will have greater carry over into daily life.

The danger with emphasising functional training is that all other exercise is at risk of being regarded as inferior.
So, play for your local football club? Great, let’s develop your explosive power, fast footwork, leg strength and stamina (so you can last the match!) Whoa, hold on a minute. If we plunge straight into functional training without considering the problems that may already exist due to muscular imbalances we’re on a fast track to injury and a season ticket to the bench. In our insistence to promote the superiority of functional training we may be in danger of neglecting, dare I say it, resistance machines for fear of being accused of training muscles in isolation. Yet training in this way can have its advantages. By training in a non-functional way, working a muscle in isolation by a single joint movement, strength will be gained, an imbalance may be addressed and the risk of injury can be decreased. So, for example, some simple isolation exercises may confer real benefits to our hip replacement lady.

Certainly functional training is an important aspect of any well rounded training programme. However, in our haste to embrace all things “functional” it’s important we don’t lose sight of other valid training methods.

Tags: Functional Training