What is Functional Strength Training

Okay. I just thought I'd talk today to you about functional strength training. Why is it functional? Why do we do functional? What does functional actually mean? Because some people have no idea what functional strength training is. And when I say I'm a functional strength trainer, they look up and down and go, you don't look like a bodybuilder at all. So functional strength training. Functional strength training is where we use all the body parts, all the muscles in our body that we would use for everyday life. Every day life could include taking the bin out, the wheelie bin out for collection. It could involve taking your grandchild and putting them in their car seat. So many things that relate to functional strength training. We do it every day. Every time we sit down the loo, we're doing functional strength training. So when we try and train up all the parts of our body, we're trying to train our body for everyday life moves. And some people, and amazing enough, when you're young, you don't even think that you won't be able to do it one day. But many people, when they get to a certain age, or actually not even older, but they've just stopped trying to make their body work, they will go into functional decline.

And as a nurse at the hospital, as well as a trainer, I see it all the time, particularly when someone comes in to me and they go, I can't walk anymore without a stick, or I can't get myself down on the low couch anymore. I can't do it. Then I know that things have started to go wrong. And in the hospital, you I see that all the time, particularly people, even my age, have lost their ability to roll in bed or get up off the bed, and even to sit down on a low loo. And quite a few people, particularly as they age, need a high chair to really sit down the loo because I've lost the ability to use their quadricep muscles to sit down.

So I'm just going to give you a little explanation today of traditional strength training versus functional strength training, and then what you can do if it's too hard or too easy So I think that quite a few people, when they look at strength training, are looking at the traditional bodybuilder's thoughts. So they expect, when you say you're a trainer or you do functional strength training, that you're going to be muscle upon muscle, bulging out of your body.

And that's so not the case with functional strength training. We will have a strong body, but it's for everyday moves. So that just carries over into everyday life, into everyday activities. So bodybuilding, specifically, is all about bigger, sculpted muscles. But bigger doesn't equate to better. So they're all about the look. They're about flexing their muscles and looking great with all that nice tan that they have on a stage. All they're about, the And not about functionality. And in fact, quite a few people who do body building actually have bodies that don't work too well for them because they've overdone it with how big they build up their muscles. And the other type of training that quite a few people think is the norm is to train How many big gyms do you go into that have row after row of treadmills and rowers and all that stuff, overhead press machines and stuff. And that's all fine. Maybe if you're a beginner or you're rehabbing after an injury, or you do it just every now and then. That is not the preferred way to train because it doesn't carry over into everyday life. Let me give you an example.

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If I'm going to do a squat with a free weight and I've got maybe some I have weights in my hands, and I'm allowing myself to go down and up, then this is a functional move. I've got to learn to be able to get on a loo and get up. I've got to be able to learn to get down on that low chair and get up. Now, if I'm on a leg press machine and I'm lying back at the gym, I've got myself all relaxed. So my back's got a back support, my bum is sitting on a nice patted chair, and then I'm trying to push my legs out with this weight. That's all cool. I'm getting my legs strong, but I'm not doing it in conjunction with the rest of And so in that way, it's not a functional exercise, and probably it's not going to help you in everyday life. You're just going to get strong legs to be on the leg press machine, and people can brag about that. But if you're looking at how it relates to everyday life, it's not going to really cut it. Because what we're doing there is train the muscles in isolation to the rest of the body.

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And any time we train a muscle in isolation, which you do in bodybuilding as well, I might be training my biceps today. So I'm going to get nicely shaped biceps But that doesn't relate to the remainder of my body and what I'm trying to do with it. So power lifting as well is where these people get these massive big weights and do it all in one fast swoop lifting up and allowed to come back down. Again, that is a functional type of thing, but they're going for the biggest weights they can do. It's not really a carry-over into everyday life. So again, it's really competing against someone else or against yourself to be able to pick up the biggest weight you can. So functional training is all about trying to relate our body, making every muscle, every reflex, every stabilization in our body, work as hard as it can. So if I fall, or if I need to jump over a stream, or if I need to hold myself back from that long trying to fall on me, then I've got a whole lot of my body all working in conjunction with one another to be able to achieve the result that I want.

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And so it's not just having one part that's strong and everything else is weak. It's trying to have everything working together. So if you want to say that functional training is allowing all your muscles to be strong, working together, gray Cook, one of the leading trainers in the world in functional movement talks about how we're training the way we move. So we're training a movement pattern rather than specific muscles. That's what functional strength training is about. Our basic movements are things like pushing, pulling, twisting, lifting, carrying, and so much more. So therefore, when we do put that child or grandchild into their car seating the car, we have to, for example, pick them up, or we might have to carry them to the car first. Then we've got to pick them up out of maybe the baby seat they're in to put them in the baby seating the car. So we have to pick up, lift. We have to twist to get them in the car, and then we have to pump them down. And then the reverse What happens when we have to get them out at the end of the car ride. So that is functional.

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This is what we're trying to train to do. So you're able to do that without getting a sore back or without being able to hurt yourself and having the ability to do it. Some people just don't have the ability, when they've lost strength, to actually pick up a grandchild, particularly when they weigh about 12 kilos or so, they can be quite a big lump to have to pick up. So you may have come out from Coles or Woolworth, so you've got all your groceries, and you've had to, when the ladies pack them, you're going to take that bag of groceries, and you've got to put them in your trolley. Then the next bag, and then when you get to your car, you're going to take them out of your trolley, pick them up, pop them around, probably with a twist, and pop them back in. And you probably, if you're like me, you carry a whole pile of stuff around the store because I only ever plan to go in and get one thing, and I end up with about twelve things. So I'm carrying them around the store, and I've got to rely on my body.

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Then I'm not going to drop them every now and then. I have to drop them. So I've got to work out how I hold the rest of them in one arm and pick up with the other arm. So it all comes in very handy when you're trying to take yourself around the store. And if you're in the store and you've got a full trolley, you're going to have to push that trolley and maybe pull it at times when the wheels don't go properly. So this is what it's all about. So functional strength training utilizes all different methods to train all different muscle groups. Some of the equipment I love to use are bands, fit balls, and kettlebells, and that's what we do in this group. But also there'll be times that I'll show how to use barbell, suspension trainers. There's all so many ways to work your body. I try and keep it really simple within the This group with just three bits of equipment, but sometimes I'll branch out and I'll show other ways of training as well. It is just fun when you use bits of equipment. I know that the women that I speak to all the time that I train would be bored to tears just doing body weight all the time.

It just would be boring. So being able to pick different bits of gear is such an essential thing. That's a fun thing to do because you feel like you're playing around with things, and it's quite cool. So I would say to you, if you're functional training two to Every time a week, you will feel stronger, you'll look toned, and you'll feel more energetic as well. And you'll find that you're going to do things that you couldn't do before, and that you won't have pain with things that you had pain with before. I want to just touch on, if you find an exercise in our program too hard, take it a little easier. How do you take a tiny bit easier? Well, you can decrease the weight that you've got in your hands. So you can do it with no weight or decrease the weight. You can do less reps. So if I'm pulling up doing a whole pile of reps, you can take it slower. Sometimes slow is harder, though. You can take it slower, have a break. Take another one, have a break. Another way to take it easier is partial range So rather than doing a big step out to the side in a side lunge, you can take a smaller step out.

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There's always ways to work within the boundaries of what your body can do. If you have pain with any movement, you want to take a smaller range of motion. An example of this, too, would be an overhead press. So if I'm doing a big overhead press lifting right up to here, and I've got a sore shoulder, I may only come up to here today. And that's still working my shoulder and my upper but without putting the excess pressure on my shoulder that might be sore. And also you can avoid that move. So sometimes there's a move that will trigger something that is not quite right with your body. Maybe it's a previous injury. It's quite tight. You can just avoid that movement altogether. So there's a number of ways to do it. It's by having more rest, by taking a smaller weight, by having a pause. It's by not doing the movement at all. Now, if you If you're not going to work harder, you think, oh, this is too easy, then we can reverse that. So you can try maybe instead of two legs doing a squat, try one leg. That is always a good way to work harder.

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You can use a bigger weight. So if you You're finding that your body is starting to adapt with what you're doing with the weight you've got, try a bigger weight. Maybe even try two weights, one in each hand rather than just one weight. You can try a greater range of emotion as well. Again, talking about that lunge, if you're doing a step out to the side, you can do a bigger step out. You can do a bigger overhand press. If you've only ever done yours to here before, maybe it's time to try a bit higher as long as your shoulders and things are okay with that. We can do more reps. So you can really get that weight if we're doing some rows and do more reps than what you did before. And the other way you can work harder is less rest in between. So it just means you combine a whole pile of exercise together. You don't have much rest, and you just keep going and crank them out. Sometimes, as I said before, working harder can just be going slower. So time under tension is also a way that we can work harder.

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So if we're pulling a band, for example, and we're doing short pools, that can be hard, but so can also doing the pool and holding the band back can actually really make us work incredibly hard as well. So there's a few ways of doing things. I just want to touch on why functionally Functional strength training. Why do we functionally strength train instead of building a bulky body? It's all about a functional body, a workable body, a body that works for you day in and day out, and that you can do things that you hope to do into older age, because we don't want functional decline. Functional decline is the start of when you probably don't have as long to live, when you can't do the same moves that you once did, that's going And it just be a short in your lifespan to a certain degree. And it also takes away dreams that you still got to fulfill. I'm a 58-year-old, and I still have places to go, like in Macu Picu. I don't know if that's how you pronounce it. Chris, my friend over here. I just want to make sure that I'm still fit enough to do that.

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We haven't got there yet, and we still want to go. So if you've got dreams to achieve, then you want to keep yourself functionally fit. And remember, if a movement you do causes pain or doesn't work for you, skip that one, go have a drink or whatever, and wait for the next one. You'll normally find that there's some way to adapt that move, that you can still do it. But if you can't at all, please don't do the move and move on to the next one. Okay, I'm glad that you could join me today, and I look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.