Jesse Cannone - The Functional Training Craze!

[webmaster]

More and more people are using functional training, and some argue it's the only way to train. The purpose of this article is to give people an understanding of what functional training is, and what it does and does not do.

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/jessec4.htm

HOW TO REVIEW: Post Your Review Of This Article - CLICK ON POST REPLY BELOW! You do NOT need to be a registered member to post a reply in this section!

[EricS]

I think one of the main problems is the trainers get carried away with the whole functional training. Functional training, as you pointed out, should in some way resembe the skil/sport we are training for. Putting someon on an unstable enviornment doesn't make it functional.

There should be questions asked when someone throws the term functional around. As functional for what?

Is it functional in terms of joint sequences, timing, metabolicaly, movement paterns, intensity, what is it really functional for.

If you are training for a sport and someone puts you on an unstable enviornment or puts a band in your hand, they better not call it functional.

Well...Unless your are into log rolling

This article does a great job of completely missing the point! Keep it up the more people you convince the less competition I'll have

The purpose of functional training is not to put someone in an unstable environment and pretend that it is the same environment that they will encounter in a sporting event. Some of the purposes are to increase muscle balance at joints (therefore decreasing the risk of injury), allow for movements to be made using the whole bodies muscular system (including abs, stabilizer muscles, lower back, and antogonists), and prepare someone for what they may experience when trying to recruit their whole bodies power not just that of their chest, back, or legs individually. In most sports participants need to use all of these muscle groups in conjunction, but with classical weight training someone only learns to use one set of muscles at a time. It is not a matter of sport specificity, it is a matter of using the body as a single unit, not the just the sum of many different muscle groups.
There will be cases where functional training is not appropriate, one such case is bodybuilding where the only goal is hypertrophy. The only help that functional training could give to a bodybuilder would be to help to prevent injuries if it is used at the very begining of a training cycle. However, the idea that functional training is only designed for unstable environments is not true, as a person progesses through the phases there is the initial stages of balance and stability, then a movement into hypertrophy and growth training, and finally power training and plyometrics. and if you really believe that plyos does not work to increase speed and the height a person can just then I ask you why has accelleration training and jump training that incorporates plyos had such great success (not just with its students but also finacially)?