Functional Training;
What is it anyway?
The fitness industry is known for coming up with buzzwords. Every industry or brand does this though. A good marketing strategy for any company is to develop a company slogan. But why would the fitness industry need to do this? Just like all other companies, they are trying to sell us something. What are they trying to sell us? Fitness of course! The problem is (in the fitness industry especially), as my friend and business partner Jake likes to say, “people want and love the new and shiny object”.
We do not like to be bored. We love to be entertained and have our minds on nothing as much as possible. With the increase in technology, this has become even more of a problem. Our desires for instant gratification and pleasure are at an all-time high. But how does this impact the fitness industry? Great question reader!!! I have heard so many times in my career that people choose not to exercise because they are bored. Or they quit and exercise plan all together because they were bored. So, instead of embarking on a hardship (hard work) for the sake of good health, they quit and are now unhealthier than ever (which I would consider a greater hardship, but that’s just me).
So, to get more people to the gym, and give people something new and shiny, the fitness industry has had to give people what they want. I believe this to be an honorable act in that we all want more people to start and maintain healthier lifestyles. One of the buzzwords, or terms I want to dissect is Functional Training. It seems that every fitness educational company has its own version or certification for “Functional Training”. Many speakers and so-called experts in the industry give lectures on what is functional vs not functional.
I feel a huge mistake has been made in the fitness industry (that means it could negatively impact us as consumers) by how “Functional Training” has been defined and sold. To generalize (does not mean everyone says or does this), functional training has been sold or defined by; standing on unstable surfaces, exercises have to mimic everyday life, sport, or activity in order to transfer (be beneficial?), if its on a machine its not functional. We are going to go through the exercise (of our brain muscle!!!) of looking at how these definitions might be missing something as well as put to rest some of the misconceptions that are out there in the functional and personal training world.
We will first start with some basic concepts that hopefully help answer multiple questions at once. I wanted to start with an example/question; if you could sit with a doctor for a day, and he saw 20 patients, and all the patients came in with 20 different symptoms, would you expect the doctor to prescribe the exact same medicine or remedy to all 20 patients? The answer is, absolutely not! Probably, in some cases, there might be different symptoms that are shared by the same diagnosis and need the same medication/remedy, but for the most part, those patients would probably have different treatment plans that were specific to their needs.
For the body to heal or improve certain aspects of itself, it needs specific treatment/help (exercise, medication, sleep, vitamins, food, water, etc…). We cannot expect specific adaptations (muscle growth, weight loss, increase range of motion, speed, power, etc..) to happen when we are doing exercises or challenges that are not specific. Our adaptations to the demands we put our bodies will be specific to the stimulus we provide. I believe this is where the thought of exercises “mimicking” the task we were trying to improve. The problem is that there is a difference between getting better at a skill, vs specifically improving specific pieces of the body.
If a client of mine wants to get better at golf, swinging a golf club should be done as a major piece of that program. It has been well documented that swinging a heavy bat or golf club decreases an athlete’s ability (club/bat speed) and decreases performance (less distance, and less ability to hit the ball on the sweet spot). So, the thinking that we should consistently load (weighted bat/club) in the hopes of building core strength or the ability to swing the bat faster is inaccurate. What should make up a large part of that person’s program is breaking down the specific motions (joint motions) of the swing and looking deeper into the individual person’s ability at each of those motions (range of motion (ROM), strength etc..)
Let’s look at just a few of the pieces that go into swinging a bat or golf club. The obvious one is spinal or trunk rotation as well as side bend (lateral curving of the spine). There is also internal and external rotation that occur at both hips. Both feet go through pronation (flat foot) and supination (arch foot). The scapulae move through protraction and retraction and the shoulder move through internal and external rotation (a simple example is pit of elbow turned in and then turned out). Now, since the trunk is rotating left and right, and the head is relatively still, the head also has to rotate left and right. That seems like a lot, but there are more and a lot more detail that can go into a golf swing that I did not mention (knees, elbows, wrists).
So, if we had a client who had major lack of motion and strength in rotation to one side and major lack of motion and strength in one or more motions at the hip, and we asked them to swing a heavy club, or do an integrated exercise (integrated to us means whole body/not isolated exercise, also does not mean “bad”), as their primary way of improving the golf swing, the body will naturally use or call upon what it is already strong or good at to accomplish the task. The body is an energy efficiency machine. It likes and desires to make every task as easy as possible. The body will not call upon the weakest link and say, “muscle(s), we need to get you stronger, so get out there on your own and get stronger”. It will say, “Who do I have that is strong and able, let’s use you guys and the weaker guys, you stay on the bench till the last resort”.
What we would need to do, is create exercises for each of those movements. Why do we need exercises? Well, what moves our bones? Our muscles! If our muscles are lacking strength, then we will probably see some coinciding ROM asymmetry or tightness. Wait a second Glenn!! Let’s not just pass by that statement and assume we all caught that. Lacking motion (flexibility) is possibly caused or influenced someway in a muscle’s ability to produce force. But I thought ROM or flexibility was limited because muscles are tight?
That’s an excellent and very important concept we need to digest. There has been plenty of research done that proves that stretching before activity does not decrease the chances of injury or long-term ROM improvements. So, why do we have tight muscles? Well, there is never one answer. I will try to talk about a couple of examples that might help us understand just a little more as to why our muscles become tight.
The first example is that of a group project. We’ve all had them before, and we all hated them. Now, who were you in the group project? The one that did all the work or the one who did none of the work? For those that did all the work, how did you feel by the end of the group project? Were you upset and wanted to make sure that on group grading score you gave those people that did nothing a zero! Well, that’s a very simplistic example of your body trying to accomplish a task when one or more of the muscles that are supposed to accomplish the task are not performing optimally (or as good as needed). The ones doing all the work are possibly getting really “tight” or sore because they are doing the bulk of the work.
In that same example, we often try to stretch or massage that area to get rid of the sensation that we do not like. But, if the reason the muscle got tight in the first place, what will happen once you ask those muscles to do a group task again? The same thing. If the exercise or task is so repetitive (all day every day, etc..) the tightness can become chronic and not ever go away and potentially create even fewer muscles working efficiently, worsening the problem.
Another example of how the body can display tightness is when it feels vulnerable. What do I mean by vulnerable? So glad you asked! The body’s nervous system is amazing! It is constantly taking in inventory about all things, but for our purpose, we will keep it to all our muscle’s (about 320 pairs or 640 total muscles), bones and the joints that they create. Our nervous system is constantly making sure to keep us from damaging ourselves. The nervous system will create movement strategies based on how the joint surfaces are (shaped/health-arthritis, spurs) and how efficient are the muscles performing that day/minute/second. If the system deems that a specific motion is not safe to enter into, it will send tightening responses to the opposing muscles (muscles that would pull you in opposite direction of the un-safe motion/position) in order to protect itself.
This can easily be displayed in a ROM exam, where we compare our right-side movement vs our left side movement (not the only way to assess this) and see if there is a difference. Wherever we see difference or asymmetry of motion, that is a potential area of muscular weakness (as compared to the other side) where one or more muscles are not performing optimally/efficiently. Now, what potentially happens in a scenario where the right arm can raise out to the side or above the head better than another side, is that the nervous system identified potential muscles that cannot contract (your arm raisers) and in a response to that weakness, it signaled the opposing muscles (the muscles you use to reach behind you or squeeze into your side) to tighten up and stop the motion, in order to protect.
Again, one of many ways to see how the human body was so creatively and expertly put together! Another reason the nervous system might have purposefully created tightness in your opposing muscles (muscles that would reach behind you), is to protect from bone spurs or arthritic areas in the joints. The body knows it’s not healthy to enter into that motion (as it would create more problems), so it takes away the motion via tightness.
Then, the question becomes, what will happen if I stretch to increase my flexibility when the reason my muscles are tight is because of muscle weakness or joint problems? The outcome will either be very short-lived or can potentially worsen. In, both scenarios, the muscles can get weaker by forcing the arm lifters into positions they cannot control, or the unhealthy joint, they both can create more tightness as your body will try to keep you from those positions till the culprit is taken care of.
Now, back to golf or baseball swing improvement! We must first identify if the motions in the golf or baseball swing are functioning properly, and this cannot be done unless we really isolate specific motions and challenge them appropriately and specifically. We cannot improve specific motions in the body using only integrated (whole-body) exercises or balancing exercises. The body will teach itself and protect itself in an effort not to fall. There is a reason why we cannot press or handle as much weight when we are standing vs seated, or on a bench vs standing sitting on a ball. The body knows that it does not have the support (ground, bench, friction) to use to create more force or torque. So, the body downgrades its amount of force production in order not to fall or maintain balance. Just this a try, stand up straight, on one-foot or two, close to a wall, and push as hard as you can without falling. Then, have something really firm behind you, or leaning forward with both feet behind you and see how hard you can push. Did you feel more muscle(s) working or working harder? There are benefits to training on unstable surfaces, but they are not really improving specific pieces of the body, but the body’s ability to create a solution under difficult circumstances. We must be educated as exercisers and trainers to know when we need to use them.
Just like the body needs specific remedies in order to improve how tight or lack of flexibility it has, in order to make muscles stronger, we must incorporate specific exercises in order to specifically improve the strength of specific muscles and joint motions! If I need to improve the strength of my trunk rotation, I need to do exercises that are as specific to the muscles that rotate my spine and not having to worry about balance. An example of this may be, starting from a seated position with cables or on an isolated trunk rotation machine. The more anchored we can make ourselves, the more isolated our efforts can be to the muscles of trunk rotation. If we are standing, and or standing on wobble discs, our efforts get dispersed all over the body and not really isolated to the ones we really identified as needing help. Now, those are not bad or evil exercises, but if the goal is specific, we need to train specifically. Remember, the body will use what it has and try to avoid the weak areas of our body, so, the more focused the demand and challenge, the more we can try to target those weak areas.
In part two of this topic, we will dive into more misconceptions about isolated exercises and find a place for the integrated exercises as well. Here is a link to a video that demonstrates with an EMG the effects of stretching on muscles, as well as an article on stretching. Look forward to next time!
Video of effects of stretching
Glenn Haugk
Co-Owner, Director of Education at Muscle Activation Fitness
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