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.

Things you do every day

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.

Total body training is nothing new

Total body training is nothing new; it has been around since the dawn of time.  The twist is Sam Iannetta’s insight into using modern biomechanics to insure you are performing exercises in a way that is truly good for you.  These exercises by their nature decrease wear and decrease pain. Exercises that improve posture, structural integrity, balance, muscular strength, agility and decrease body fat all while having a good time.  It is time to end the myth that all exercise is good for you.  Exercise has to be user independent. It is not hard for us all to believe that we look different from each other. Why is it so hard to believe we all have different movement patterns that can be addressed with exercise and cleaned up to increase performance in all around real life?   Total body training exercises make you pay attention to the weak links because that is what gets tired first.  Weak links are also what sets you up for muscular failure in the real world.

Example…A good example is the number of accidents that happen on a ski slope during the last ½ hour of the day.    It is because of the weak link muscles become fatigued and give out…ACL’s get torn. Ski patrols actually have additional staff come in to handle the additional workload.