Functional Training
What is Functional Training?
Functional training is exercise performed to better enable the participant to
move through normal life activities. Functional fitness implies performing exercise
in an optimal way, to achieve certain goals that allow improved performance
of regular activities outside the gym. This may mean more fluid precise movements,
accomplishing necessary activities with the least possible wear and destruction,
and
remaining pain free in the performance of mundane tasks. Better function could
have applications in pulling weeds, loading the dishwasher, waxing the car or
carrying groceries home from the store.
Function is completely user-dependent and must be defined by the participant
in functional training, not the instructor. Think about the things in your life
that you do everyday: getting out of bed, walking steps, standing up from a
chair, opening a car door and getting into the car. These tasks may seem trivial,
but over a lifetime poor movement patterns in performance of these trivial activities
will lead to back pain, neck soreness and tightness, and knee damage. Poor movement
patterns also create general levels of fatigue and soreness. Functional training
examines these movement patterns and assesses what, in our particular case,
needs to be addressed.