Functional Training should be the most important part of everyone’s daily workout. It doesn’t matter what your fitness goal is or how basic your training experience is, functional training can help you lose weight, strengthen your body correctly, whilst maintaining movement and posture. In addition to this you can look at advanced functional training within sport, usually referred to as sports specific training.

Choosing the right functional exercises and understanding what functional training is, is sometimes difficult. A good definition of functional training is:

• Functional training involves movements that are specific — in terms of mechanics, coordination and/or energetics — to one’s activities of daily living (ADLs)

by NSCA Functional training: Steven Plisk, MS CSCS*D

 In its most basic form functional training consists of exercises that take your body through there everyday functions. An example of this would be simply standing up from a seated position or picking up a weighted item from the floor. In each of these examples postural awareness and correct motor skills is the key. Performing them incorrectly will lead to negative adaptations of your body, which furthermore could lead to injury and / or reduction in your joint mobility. Repeating the exercise over a high repetition conditions your body mentally and physically through its range of movement (Biomechanics).

 When introducing functional work into sports specific training we take the athletes game situation and break it down to look at what stresses their bodies are being placed under. By doing this we can determine correct functional exercises that will strengthen the areas to improve match performance and minimise chance of injury. In terms of training principles as an athlete you should look at what your sport needs e.g. Power, strength, stability, speed and what exercises / workout routines you can use to improve them. A dead lift is a perfect example of specific conditioning for a rugby player. It simulates the powerful movement of coming up from a crouched position to standing with weight (i.e. tackle), whilst strengthening all the key areas to reduce chance of injury around the spine and enhance the players ability to perform this powerful movement.

  Integrating functional work into your workouts isn’t as hard as it sounds. Bullet pointed below are some ideas.

·        For a basic gym user or home trainer using your own bodyweight in squats, lunges, press ups or variations or burpees.

·        If you’re in a gym with cables, barbells and dumbbells then the sky’s the limit. Use the bar to dead lift, be creative with dumbbells (Look at workout: Using dumbbells like kettlebells) and pull cables around your range of movement.

·        If you want to invest in some functional training equipment I would recommend kettlebells. They can be used anywhere and are extremely versatile ranging from sports performance, to basic weight and fitness. As well as kettlebells why not look into some basic functional equipment like weighted clubs or basic ones like medicine balls, fit balls and foam rollers.

·        For athletes look into what you can use to increase your game like dragging tyres behind you when running to increase speed, or flipping tractor tyres for power.

Remember that you should always have good form when performing your exercise, it’s key to building strength in all areas and correct posture.