There are many types of exercise and training regimes, but functional training is a great way to train specifically for an activity or sport you are involved in. It is training that enhances the working relationship between the muscles and the neurological system, and helps you become acutely better at your sport of choice, or activity of choice. Functional training is not just for athletes, it is also a great training type for rehabilitation.
Lets take a closer look.
What is a Functional Exercise?
The definition can be confusing, but stick with this and you will understand.
Functional strength training means performing work against resistance specifically in such a way that the strength gained directly benefits the movements associated with sports, or actions. Ok, this is not as clear as it should be, so in other words, the goal in functional strength training is to transfer the increase in strength gained in one movement to improving the performance of another movement. This is done by affecting the entire neuromuscular system. Because of this, functional training idea is to not just train the muscles involved in a movement, but the movement control itself.
How does it work? Let’s look at an example to better understand this idea.
Let’s say for example you were in a car accident, and now struggle with standing up after sitting for extended periods of time due to muscle damage in your lower back, legs, etc. With functional training, in order to improve your ability to rise from a chair, you would do squats. Why? Well squats improve lower body strength and neural control better than say knee extensions would, and result in a higher transfer of strength from the exercise to the goal movement. The whole idea with functional training is transfer. You want to make your exercises directly translate into accomplishing a set movement goal.thus you do squats, and the result is you can more easily rise from a chair.
Now, not all exercises are going to be functional exercises, thus there are some components you want to keep in mind to ensure functionality. These include:
Coordination: Coordination is key. It means your ability to coordinate the timing of contraction of all the muscles involved in the movement. This is especially important for rehabilitation or specific sport training.
Let’s look at an example of coordinating: If you want to train your back for an activity like bending down to pick up the morning newspaper, the training has to be done standing so the legs and trunk muscles are taught to coordinate their contractions with the back muscles. While there are other activities that are seated that may be beneficial for back muscles, this coordinates the back muscles with the other muscles used for the specific activity.
Range of motion: In general, it has been accepted that gains in muscle strength are greatest in the range of motion through which the exercise was performed. This is the same idea as coordination. You want to train for the same range of motion, or more than that of the activity you are training for.
Type of contraction: You want to be sure in your functional training you use the same type of muscle contraction. This is the same idea as that above. If you train your muscles to contract differently than they will for the activity or sport, then you won’t have functional results.
Speed of movement: Differences between the timing of a training movement to a goal movement are detrimental to transfer and functionality. If the differences are great, they may result in negative transfer or a decline in performance of the goal movement, rather than increased ability. So be sure the speed of the movement is similar as well.