Stop calling every exercise ‘functional’

For the vigilant, seasoned athletes and even those with interest in rehab might have noticed the ongoing discussion on functional training. Even though it has it’s episodes over the last couple of years, the discussion seems to have been in a new episode.

‘Athletes don’t do heavy squats and pullups, they do 3rd medial internal rotation clavicular lunges.’

‘Here’s a roll of tape and a resistance band, that’ll help with moving your fascia.’

Yes, your fascia are also an important part of the human body in regards to movement. But since that’s a complete other topic we’ll park it here. For now, let’s go over what the hassle on functional training is all about and my take on this topic.

3 sets of sternal abdominal external rotations

To illustrate what I’m talking about, let’s take an athlete who’s relatively new to strength training with one year down. As a beginner, the progress has been quite fast. He’s looked up some basic routines on socials and Google, but he figured it’s time for the next step. A page dedicated to functional patterns has peaked his interest. With movements looking… different, he thought that it will challenge his body and get to the next step in progressing. At first, novelty seemed to help. But over time, progress started to stagnate. Question here: ‘what is needed to efficiently combine both worlds to make steady progress longterm?’

What this athlete has done at first, was ditch almost all basics for the so called functional movements. This diluted the focus a lot with novelty.

The first step here is to regain focus by going over his initial goals when he started out about a year ago. With this information, it was easier to setup a program that better suited what was needed.

The main focus was to get the basics and fundamentals back in to it, with a focus for a longer period of time. The small variations happened every few weeks. To get some novelty and play, we’ve decided to add that as well as a small component. Most importantly, it shouldnt interfere too much.

 Lastly, going over the expected, general possibilities for progression as a (advanced) beginner. What most studies have shown is that those who are new or relatively new to strength training can progress almost linearly in the first 3 years. Meaning we can stick to the fundamentals for a longer period of time and aim to do so.

Functional how?

When it comes to human body movement, there are multiple systems working together harmoniously. If one isn’t functioning optimally, you might notice this in a decrease in performance or an injury showing up. For this article, we’ll mainly look at the strength training part of it.

Most know that your muscles and tendons get stronger with strength training. It does have this benefit, but other structures like ligaments, bones and fascia also benefit from it. With functional training, people aim to tell that regular strength training is one-dimensional. True in a way, but to stabilize a complex movement isn’t as one-dimensional. Also, the thought that each bodily structure can be trained individually. Although different exercises can place different demands on different tissues, the idea that we can completely isolate and train individual structures in isolation is much more complicated than it is often presented.

But nowadays, in the age of social media, fundamentals get a lot less attention. Rather, people are more drawn towards novelty and exercises that look complex. Not that that is directly wrong, but studies suggest that they don’t have that much added value over progressing the basics. Feel free to experiment here and there with those so called, functional movements, but make sure to have your basics as a strong foundation.

Simply put: ALL exercises have a function and are therefore functional.

Common mistakes 

Just to name a few:

-            Making exercises overly complex because it might be more effective to progress with

-            Chasing novelty instead of steady progress

-            Thinking that huge changes are necessary even though minor adjustments will do fine

What’s in it for you?

If you’re looking for some new exercises, which you definitely should do every now and then, ask yourself:

What am I trying to improve?

Why does this exercise help me achieve that?

Does it offer something my current training doesn’t?

If you can’t answer those, maybe you don’t need it.

Final thoughts

Making your training overly complex, even when you’re more advanced, is mostly unneccesary. All exercises serve a purpose, or function. Your training should serve your goals and body, with a sprinkle of play if it allows you to.

Progressing long term is about training smart and efficient, whilst keeping the motivation high, adding to your discipline. Give your body enough time to adapt and function better. It will find its way.

Not sure what your next step might be in your training journey to keep on progressing? It might be that some focus will help in this, especially with tons of options available nowadays. That’s what I enjoy helping others with. Curious to more? Let’s have a chat and see what I can do for you.