Specificity of Exercise

Personal trainers and strength coaches have been talking about the benefits of functional training for quite some time now. Functional training simply means that the exercises you choose are specific to what you are training for. For example, a functional exercise for a woman whose primary job is taking care of a house and her kids is very different from a functional exercise for a female professional soccer player. Whereas the domestic goddess needs strong and powerful legs to squat down to pick up her kids, the soccer player needs strong, powerful, and fast legs to run around the field and kick a ball accurately. In this way, functional training is very goal oriented.

Before developing a functional training workout that is right for you, you need to determine what your functional goals are and select your exercises with them in mind. What exactly does the mother of two want in a training program? Maybe she simply wants to be strong enough to pick up her kids and not hurt her back. Perhaps she wants to practice soccer with her kids in the backyard and teach them a few new moves. In each case the exercises will be different, yet functional for her goal. The five components of fitness are very closely tied to the specificity of exercise. A "soccer mom" will probably do some agility training and maybe incorporate a little cardiovascular endurance training. But a postmenopausal woman who is concerned about osteoporosis will focus on strength and balance training.

Because human activities, whether playing sports or merely walking around, are multidimensional, the basis of functional strength training is too. It uses total-body movements in multiple planes as opposed to traditional bodybuilding, which uses isolated muscular movements in one plane. We rarely have a specific daily activity that requires us to sit in a chair and extend both legs out in front of us and then bend them back, as we do when we are seated in a leg extension machine. Exercises in machines are not considered functional because we don't play sports in machines and we don't live in machines (unless you count your car). You can work the quadriceps just as well (or better) by doing a squat, which is functional because you do it every day when you squat down to sit or to pick something up. The free-weight squat also requires balance, as does squatting in everyday activities, whereas sitting inside a machine requires no balance whatsoever.

Bone and muscle both need multidimensional activities to grow to their maximum potential. We saw in chapter 2 that the more diverse stresses you can put on bone from different angles, the more you increase bone density. The same is true for muscles that have to function in all different directions. If you exercise them only one specific way, they will only get strong in that way. Working in machines or using two-dimensional exercises is definitely not functional training for an athlete. Sports are dynamic, and athletes need exercises that mimic dynamic motion and the actions of their particular sport.

Why is something called core training often lumped in with functional strength training? The philosophy behind core training is that the trunk or core is the stabilizer and the power for the entire body. The core muscles are considered the abdominals, back, hips, and butt. Movement in life occurs (and often occurs without injury) because we have been able to stabilize our core and have used it to generate power. We can reach for the glass on the top shelf without injuring our shoulders because our trunk is maintaining a base of support that our arm can work off of.

If you have watched children develop from infancy, you've seen core training in action. Babies' muscles are nothing more than wet noodles. Without a solid base, they can't go anywhere. Their first muscular mission is to get a strong neck so that they can hold their heads up and see the world. As the spinal muscles strengthen, they gain more mobility and can roll from side to side. If they are supported in a bouncy seat or lying on their backs they can reach for objects, but not if they are left unsupported-their core muscles aren't strong enough yet. Soon they are crawling and are able to move around using their extremities. As they develop greater balance and strength, they learn to stand and walk. Core training, then, is really functional strength training in its most basic definition.

You can realize different goals with different kinds of training methods, and that's what this whole book is about. You can stay safe with tried-and-true routines that you have done to death, or you can take a leap and challenge your body with a new stimulus. You'll find that if you want to develop maximal strength, a bodybuilding workout will never let you achieve that goal. If you want to be fast and explosive, lifting the total amount of weight you can lift in one repetition isn't going to cut the cake. On the other hand, weight training works on a continuum, and training routines for hypertrophy, strength, power, body composition, and general health do overlap and have mutually beneficial side effects.

Training to Improve Body Composition

Training for Health Versus Competition

Training for Hypertrophy

Training for Strength

Training for Power

Training for Muscular Endurance