Functional has evidently become the new Organic. A dearth of new articles, videos, books and blogs have appeared wearing the halo the word; and thou shalt not question its usage! So, what does functional mean? As the new household term, its being touted but not vetted, quantified but not qualified. 1. Dont label an exercise as functional without describing the function it improves. To be functional, it must enhance your ability to perform a specific task. Therefore, a hip lifted bench press could qualify functional for a Jiujitsu mount oompa bump; yet, beating a tire with a sledgehammer does not deserve the term merely because youre maniacally battering a totally innocent tractor tire. Functional means improved SPECIFIC function, and therefore, virtually any safe technique can be used to enhance function of a task with a similar movement-effort. The question actually is: are you needing that specific task enhanced? Fitness must ask, fit for what? Are you fit for your tasks? 2. Dont label the performance of an exercise as functional if you are unable to perform the specific task for which it was intended as a result. If youre laying on the ground incapable of moving, then youre not better prepared than the challenges you face. An exercise is performed functionally only when you can recover back to usable technique. Therefore, an exercises execution should never exceed beyond physiological failure, but only progress to technical failure and recover back to proper form; otherwise, youre building dysfunction, not function. Merely because an exercise is lauded with the term functional, doesnt mean youre doing it functionally. 3. Dont label a movement as functional purely because a Neanderthal once archived its use in a cave painting. Primal (another bandied term given an unquestioned halo) only means that an exercise deserves the label of functional because it improves function in genetically-given basic skills: such as protecting, hunting and gathering skills. Yet, many skills in the digital age were not found in the era of the sabertooth. So, an exercise can be functional if it helps you compensate for being forced to sit on a chair for eight hours a day. If it improves your function today, at a skill no caveman could ever imagine, it still qualifies as functional exercise. Caveman were overrated (and, therefore, nonexistent.) 4. And of course, dont label a technique as functional if it isnt supplied with its functional opposite movement to compensate for the adaptations it creates. It is NOT functional if its performance leads to dysfunction. Therefore, without compensating for the specific adaptations a movement creates, any exercise you perform is dysfunctional by definition. Your body adapts to what it repeats, and more rapidly if under resistance. If you adapt in only a direction, that movement strengthens and because of your symmetry, it weakens in the opposite movement pattern. To be qualified as a functional movement, it must come accompanied by its opposite in a pair. Functional has become the new unquestioned tyrant of the fitness world, as devoid of meaning as fitness has become. If it does not answer the question, functional for what specific purpose in what specific way for your specific needs, then it cannot be functional by definition. Similarly, if it does not answer the question, fit for what, then it cannot be categorized as fitness. We are Legion, Scott Sonnon Chief Operations Officer RMAXInternational TACFIT.tv
Posted on: Fri, 09 May 2014 13:10:31 +0000
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