Functional Training Explained

Functional Training

Do you consider yourself an athlete? If not, you should, if you move, I would consider you an athlete. You may not be a professional athlete, but you are an athlete.All humans are athletic by nature. It’s our native duty to be able to move fast with agility and be powerful and explosive through a wide range of motion.

Unfortunately, due to the nature of today’s society, most people stop learning and practicing new physical skills sometime in early childhood.You learned how to crawl, then walk, then run and jump, then you probably stopped, and started sitting too much.As humans, we must keep functioning at the highest level possible, and one way to do that is through functional training.

What Is Functional Training?

We hear so much about functional training these days. Is it a fad? A buzz word? At IFA we prefer the word movement training, for us movement is linked to everything that we do whether playing sports or doing things in everyday life.

So, for the sake of this blog, we will use the word functional training and how it aims to adapt or develop movements that allow people to perform the activities of daily life (including weightlifting and sports) more easily and without injuries. Functional training will help you to improve mobility, flexibility, stamina, balance, stability, and functional strength.

Functional Strength

Functional strength is the ability to run your load-joints (shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles) through a full range of motion without pain, stiffness, or restriction.

In today’s cushy environment, we get stuck in our simple, same, daily routines. Doing the same motions over and over. We are not spontaneously stimulated by our environment as our ancestors once were.

We need to find ways to change our environment and daily routines to keep our body structure stimulated somewhat confused.We need to do natural, native movements throughout the day, running, walking, climbing, etc.

If we don’t, our older selves will reminisce about how nice it was to function optimally. Because as you age, the next thing you know your sprint will have turned to a fast walk, your fast walk to a regular walk, your regular walk to a painfully slow walk, to a walker, to a…you get the point...

Functional training focuses on compound exercises and movements that directly improve your longevity and performance for real-life situations (i.e., playing with your kids, performing in sports, completing your work).

Functional training movements will make youbigger, stronger, faster, and healthier. They'll improve your sex life and your work life. They'll help you function better in every aspect of your physical life, and that's truly what ‘functional’ means.

Functional Training Movements

Functional strength training consists of a wide variety of movements, such as:

• pull-ups,squats, pushups, bench press, deadlifts, lunges, sprinting, and the list goes on.
• calisthenics, mobility, balance, and stability training, running, plyometrics (jump training).
• tire slams, burpees, sprints, throwing heavy objects
• sport specific training(with bands)

Functional Strength Equipment

• Olympic Bar
• Dumbells
• Kettlebells
• Steel Mace
• Indian Clubs
• Medicine Ball
• Sandbags
• Sandbells
• Resistance Bands

Make Sure You Go Heavy Too

You want strength? Then you must lift heavy! If you aren't working to progressively lifting heavier, then you aren't going to change.This doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for high rep training.

For those who are only working out at the gym, remember, it’s not all about the “big lifts” when it comes to training. Go trainingoutside the gym, get out on the trail, your backyard, a mountain, whatever.Do things that you did as a kid, play onthe rings, monkey bars at the playground.

Do things that your ancestors did to survive (hike, hunt, run in nature). Go for a run.Practice handstands: bear crawls, ape walks, frog jumps, basically anything natural, native movements, even if these movements seem unnatural, that’s only because we’ve become so stiff as people. Enhance your mind and your body’s response to this type of movement.Sit less and get out of your comfort zone.

Moving functionally is truly being human. It’s not so much about the type of training you are doing, it’s more about your mentality and goals, that way you know you are working towards an outcome that improves life.We were made to be functional, let’s not lose that.