By Richard Tardif
Functionally speaking, that is. I also want to know if you will be strong enough to carry me?
First, functional strength is thought of as the strength that gets us through life and daily survival without injury. In describing FS authors often ask us to think back to the history books and those photos or drawings of men and women pushing and pulling of primitive mechanical devices in the building of the pyramids, and on it goes.
I often look back at the past, my past, and often recall those days in the Army. Mostly, those times when I was out in the forest digging trenches or patrolling under the stars through the badlands of Alberta, yet I always focused on my buddies, my platoon mates, and how we depended on each other. All of us had to be strong.
Second, If I was hurt, I needed to know that my buddies could get me to a point to be evacuated. If that meant carrying me, so be it. I needed to be strong to get my buddy to an evacuation point. I realized quickly why our physical training was important. You know that wall on the obstacle course famous in many war movies, the big green wall? Without a rope, the only way over is with the help of your buddy. A buddy at the top of the wall helped the last man. Strength. Operating as a single unit. No one left behind.
Even the desk guru of today’s society can move a house and carry kids on his or her shoulders, if the time has been taken to be strong. And it’s happening. Today, many of us can take on new sports, new challenges, at any age with confidence in our knees, back and in our hearts. Back to the army – we all had to be emotionally strong, too.
I recall during a three-day patrol in Alaska in January how sometimes we had to keep our attitude
in check. When one was ready to give in, the other was there, and so on. So when I’m meeting you at the Café, I want you strong if something happens. I want to be strong to be in a position to help you.
Functional strength, as per definition, is the ability to run your load-joints (shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles) through a full range of motion without pain, stiffness, or restriction. This is also known as load-joint articulation. So is functional training it? Side by side are we going to be strong?
The short answer, for some, is no and not even close.
Some might go on to say it’s a load of hogwash. They say Functional training has deteriorated into a circus act of bodyweight training and over-complicated multi-joint movements that incorporate balance, mobility, flexibility and strength, and some say it improves none of them, and the typical weight room with its one-plane, up and down isolation of muscles movement will do the work.
Logically, bodyweight training doesn’t. But who am I? I’ll answer the question you have right now. I am not a kinesiologists. I’m not a doctor. I am logical.
But, on a day-to-day basis, we go through a wide variety of movements. This can include running, jumping, pulling, pushing, lifting so to properly train for improvement requires more than just increasing weight resistances for a muscle or a group of muscles.
The goal behind functional training, as it seems common across much of the research out there, is to improve the overall working coordination between your nervous and muscular systems. It is just as important to train for a specific movement, as it is to train specific muscles or muscle groups. Our brains do not think of things as a single muscle but rather as one whole movement, a summation of forces. By the way, I love weight lifting for targeting specific muscles, when I want to. For overall function I prefer functional training.
