Functional Training – Method or Madness? Part Two

I have never been reluctant to challenge conventional wisdom
and it was conventional wisdom that was causing us to stagnate in training. It
just was not getting the job done. I felt there had to more than max V0₂
and other artificial measurements of performance, more than just mindlessly
running straight ahead, more than excessive emphasis on heavy lifting, more
than fancy machines that isolated body parts and more than static stretching. I
leaned heavily on the work of Logan & McKinney and their classic text Kinesiology,
Knott & Voss and their work on Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation
and John Jesse and his approach to performance training and injury prevention.
It was a move away from a linear reductionist and segmented view of the body to
a holistic, synergistic quantum approach. In so many ways what evolved as
functional training taps into old tried and true concepts and methods that were
once the norm and then fell out of favor for various reasons. The saying that
everything old is new again could not be truer.

Unfortunately the concept of functional training as it has
evolved and been co-opted by the “fitness industry” has been bastardized and
compromised into a weird amalgamation of crazy exercises without any logical
progression or justification. It is more than exercises; it is a systematic
sequential and progressive approach to training for the rigors of competition.
There is no magic or mystery, just application of basic principles that are
proven and have stood the test of time. It is more than just a bunch of
exercises thrown together that are different; it is variety with a purpose. The
key to a good sound functional training program is progression. You must
carefully assess where you are at the present time and carve out a step-by-step
progression to achieve specific realistic training objectives. Know where have
you been and where are you going. Then fill the gap with a logical functional
progression that will move forward only when the previous step has been
mastered.

In today’s high tech world we sometimes forget the basics.
The farther away from the body the less functional we become. The human body is
a beautiful finely tuned organism that far surpasses the most finely tuned high
performance machine created by man. It is the ultimate high tech machine.
Despite all its complexity the body is also incredibly simple. In order to take
advantage of the body’s wisdom we must focus on how the body actually
functions. We must understand the movements in sport in order to understand
functional training for sports. A thorough understanding of function will allow
us to design and implement a comprehensive training programs for each sport and
athlete.

The body is a link system; this link system is referred to
as the kinetic chain. Functional training is about linkage – it is how all the
parts of the chain work together in harmony to produce smooth efficient
patterns of movement. Conventional academic preparation still focuses on
studying individual muscles based on classical anatomy. This is where the
confusion begins as to what is functional movement. We must remember that we do
not function in the anatomical position. The anatomical position is static; it
provides us with the perspective of mental convenience to arrange of all the
individual muscles for ease of study and observation. In order to truly
understand functional training we must get away from the focus on muscles and
focus instead on movements. It is important to emphasize that the brain does
not recognize individual muscles. It recognizes patterns of movement, which
consist of the individual muscles working in harmony to produce movements
required by the sport.

In order to completely understand
function we must understand the role that gravity plays in movement. The fact
that we live, work and play in a gravitationally enriched environment cannot be
denied. Gravity has minimal effect on the body in the anatomical position, but
maximum effect on the body in movement. We simply cannot ignore gravity, it is
essential for movement, and it loads the system. Therefore we must learn to
overcome its effects, cheat and even defeat it occasionally. Over reliance on
machines for training will give us a false sense of security because they
negate some of the effects of gravity. Gravity and its effect must be a prime
consideration when designing and implementing a functional training program to
prepare the body for the forces that it must overcome.