Functional Training Revisited

Abstract

MANY TRAINING IDEAS ARE INevitably turned into fads, cults, and organizations in the strength and conditioning world. One of the most recent is the so-called “functional training.” Although this topic has been addressed and taught for many years in sports training and rehabilitation, it is only now that some coaches appear to consider that this form of training is a unique discovery that will automatically change the sporting performances of all who implement it. Consequently, this “functional” fad now seems to have joined the ranks of the ball specialists, the core conditioning crowd, the muscle isolationists, and the “slow is safe” and “aerobics is best” cults. It has become such a hot item that its proponents are creating the impression that all other approaches to sports training are wrong, unproductive, spurious, or ineffectual. In the 1980s at the National Strength and Conditioning Association and at other strength-oriented conferences, I discussed the role of proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) as a comprehensive system of “functional conditioning” and not as simply another method of “stretching” (13, 14), but it was hard to anticipate then that functional training would become such a misunderstood concept. Unfortunately, far too many people since then have created a veritable fitness cult out of misapplication or personal reinterpretation of the term “functional” training or rehabilitation, which has been used in the therapeutic setting for many years. To go back even further, the terms “structure” (or “form”) and “function” have long been used in scientific and therapeutic circles, with the former referring to the phenomenon of growth of the substance forming the organism and the latter referring to the way in which the organism operates (e.g., read the book by McNeill Alexander [11] on this topic). So, if we apply these time-worn original definitions to the world of sports training, structural training would be directed at enhancing maintenance and growth of the various systems of the body, whereas functional training would refer to the way in which these systems operate and produce motor output. Out of this classical work emerged the finding that form or structure follows function, a principle that one still finds in PNF and other forms of therapy (4, 5).