Q: What is functional exercise?
A: Functional training focuses on exercising several muscle groups together rather than working a particular muscle, or group of muscles, in isolation. This approach to training results in the enhancement of functional performance for the participant. Individuals will be able to perform their daily activities and recreational pursuits with greater ease, less discomfort and best of all, with greater skill. If your hobby is rock climbing or golf, bowling, or even chasing after grandkids, functional training helps you enhance those activities.
Q. Where did the concept of functional training come from?
A: The emergence of modern functional exercise came from the rehabilitation community in the mid-1980s as physical therapists were exploring different methodologies to help bring injured athletes back to normal functions faster. Physical therapists underwent a paradigm shift in their approach to rehabilitation. They started looking at functional recovery with a total-body approach rather than treating only the injured joint or isolated muscle group. Leaders in the industry started using early partial weight- bearing exercise and began incorporating multi-plane movements and synergistic use of muscle groups. They found that patients gained their best results when they rehabbed using exercises and training methods that closely resembled the way the body works in daily life.
The late 1960s and early 1970s saw a movement towards machines that isolated individual muscle groups. The popular belief at the time was that you had to isolate the muscle in order to fully strengthen it. Now, we know that training the body in the same way you move and work in life actually enhances what we call functional strength – that is how strong one is relative to one’s own body weight. This functional strength translates into enhanced performance capabilities when moving your body in space and through the gravitational environment in which we exist.
Q: Functional exercise is becoming more and more popular in health clubs. Can you explain why?
A: Functional exercise’s recent success in the health club industry is due in large part to its versatility and scalability. A 15-year-old and an 80-year-old can be doing essentially the same workout sideby- side at different levels. It allows each of them to develop the strength, flexibility and endurance that they need for daily activities. For example, the 15-year-old will be less prone to sports injuries, and the 80-year-old will experience improved balance and will be able to more easily perform daily tasks like picking up grandchildren or groceries.
When you look at enhancing function you have to take all the elements into account: agility, stretching, body composition, strength, balance, power, proprioception and more. If you train with movements that recreate daily function, you become stronger overall as opposed to only training in a linear plane of movement. On a Swiss ball or gravity-based machine you are in an unstable environment versus a locked-down, totally supported environment. Unstable environments are completely safe, and you are forced to recruit the core stabilizing muscles.
Functional training is also ideal for the deconditioned population. It allows them to work the entire body in a natural form of exercise that enhances and strengthens the body as a whole in a short period of time, so they can see results fast. That’s the bottom line – clients seeing results.
Q: How can offering functional exercise programs help build a club’s business?
A: Most importantly, members don’t have to commit to large chunks of time to achieve great results from functional training programs. This fact influences members to add these programs to existing workout sessions. Fee-based functional resistance training in small- to medium-sized groups is the best way to add variety for members who are already doing cardio workouts in the gym, and who don’t want to spend another hour in weight training. With functional resistance training sessions, members will see fast results with a 30-minute total-body workout added to the front or backend of a cardio class. Customer satisfaction builds business. And, programs that bring in cash and offer satisfying results to members, increase bottom line growth.
Some great examples of functional training programs include: Swiss balls for core stability and balance, Bosu balance training, the GRAVITYSystem for small group resistance training and Pilates and Bodyblade for core control, strength and joint stabilization. There are many choices, and some can bring value to all aspects of the club operations, including: increased bottom line profits, trainer education, more dollars per hour per trainer, member variety and retention.
Q: How can gym owners educate their members about the benefits of functional exercise?
A: The best way to sell functional exercise to your club base is to start with your trainers. Currently, personal trainers in quality facilities receive a lot of education on functional training and that is trickling down to the members. Trainers are moving away from oldfashioned strength training modalities and really approaching their clients from a functional perspective. Those who come from the sports medicine environment are leading the functional movement.
Tom Campanaro is President of efiSports Medicine. He can be contacted at 866.380.8022, or visit www.efisportsmedicine.com.
