Functional training: only the name is functional
How functional is so-called functional training, really?
Functional training is all the rage. Time and again, the media report on it and claim that functional training, as a form of training, is more functional than other forms of training. Often it even goes a step further. Then it's even claimed that other forms of training aren't functional at all. These claims are usually justified by the fact that several muscles or muscle groups are active at the same time and that their interplay is trained. As a result, the benefit of functional training for everyday life is supposedly higher, because, from an outside perspective, the exercises are after all closer to everyday movement.
Let's take a critical look at these (marketing) claims about functional training. You'll quickly notice that much of it is just smoke and mirrors.
Functional training and muscle function.
A skeletal muscle has one particularly important function above all: producing force. Every production of force by the muscle during training is therefore already functional. To illustrate, let's take the biceps brachii muscle as an example. It has 3 functions. The biceps brachii muscle is responsible, on the one hand, for flexion (bending the forearm) at the elbow joint. In addition, with the elbow at a right angle, it is the strongest supinator (outward rotation of the hand). If both heads of the biceps brachii contract, the result is anteversion (raising the arm forward) of the arm. Each of these movements is therefore functional, because each of these movements is a function of this muscle. If you now want to train your biceps as efficiently as possible, you should train these functions individually and weaken the muscle in each of its functions.
If you now perform an exercise as part of functional training, you'll be able to carry out that exercise for exactly as long as it takes for the weakest muscle involved in it to become completely exhausted. Which muscle that is can sometimes not be predicted at all, because of how coordinatively demanding the exercises are. So you don't really know what adaptations to expect.
Functional training and the central nervous system
At the start of the exercise, the central nervous system apparently decides whether it's a force task or a position task (Rudroff et al 2011). With a position task, the muscles fatigue faster than with a force task at the same training resistance. The stimulus on the muscles involved is therefore smaller. So if you want to increase your muscle mass, functional training shouldn't be your first choice.
Functional training can certainly make sense if you want to train the interplay between muscles. However, it's important to know that neuronal adaptations tend to be movement-specific. So you'll learn to perform exactly that exercise “better”, or more economically. You therefore can't simply transfer the adaptation from that exercise to other movements or exercises. This has mainly to do with the function-dependent recruitment of motor units (MUs). If you want to learn as many different movements as possible, we recommend taking up a sport that can guarantee this (football, basketball, hockey, boxing etc.). Another way to learn a wide variety of movements is group fitness classes such as P.I.I.T, Kick Power, Fitboxe or Zumba.
