Functional Fitness: Designing a Functional Fitness Program

[Explor­ing Life]The world of fit­ness and exer­cise is becom­ing increas­ingly com­pli­cated and often times con­fus­ing. Var­i­ous styles and meth­ods of exer­cise con­stantly com­pete for our atten­tion. My own expe­ri­ence in fit­ness and exer­cise include Yoga, Pilates, weight train­ing, car­dio rou­tines and stretch­ing. While each method has ben­e­fits when prac­ticed cor­rectly, I have yet to dis­cover a com­pre­hen­sive method of fit­ness train­ing that is focused on main­tain­ing and strength­en­ing the essen­tial func­tion­al­ity of the human body through­out life. Func­tional fit­ness is a term gain­ing recog­ni­tion, yet its def­i­n­i­tion is less cer­tain. In this arti­cle I offer a def­i­n­i­tion of func­tional fit­ness, describe five key prin­ci­ples for design­ing a func­tional fit­ness pro­gram, and briefly explore how the prin­ci­ples should be applied.

Defin­ing Func­tional Fitness

A holis­tic per­spec­tive: A holis­tic approach to fit­ness would nat­u­rally include phys­i­cal, men­tal, emo­tional and nutri­tional fit­ness. These four basic com­po­nents of fit­ness are inte­gral. For the pur­pose of design­ing an exer­cise pro­gram, I will focus on func­tional fit­ness as it per­tains to the human body. The basic idea of func­tional fit­ness is to pro­vide exer­cise for the body that is specif­i­cally designed to increase the integrity, strength and flex­i­bil­ity involved in every­day move­ments (walk­ing, stand­ing, sit­ting, lift­ing, reach­ing, etc.). In other words, func­tional fit­ness is designed to improve the ways in which we phys­i­cally move through the con­flu­ence of sit­u­a­tions and cir­cum­stances of every­day life.

Intre­gated Move­ments: Many of every­day actions and move­ments lie out­side of our own aware­ness. For exam­ple, walk­ing is a phys­i­cal activ­ity we often take for granted. We do not tend to focus and con­cen­trate on how we are walk­ing. But incor­rect habits of walk­ing can lead to sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems later in life. A func­tional fit­ness pro­gram would embrace walk­ing as a core move­ment in life and pro­vide exer­cises that are specif­i­cally aimed at using the cor­rect phys­i­cal move­ments. In this sense, func­tional fit­ness requires the train­ing of body aware­ness (also referred to as biofeed­back or proprioception).

Every Body is Unique: Since each of us has dif­fer­ent needs due to the struc­ture of our bod­ies and our per­sonal his­tory of body use and injury, func­tional fit­ness pro­grams are cus­tomized to meet spe­cific indi­vid­ual needs. While it is pos­si­ble to develop generic rou­tines that would ben­e­fit every­one, it is also pos­si­ble to cus­tomize exer­cise rou­tines in ways that address the spe­cific needs of the indi­vid­ual. Thus, func­tional fit­ness can be both generic and customized.

High Per­for­mance Train­ing: Func­tional fit­ness can also be applied to spe­cific sports activ­i­ties, For exam­ple, golfers would ben­e­fit from a cus­tomized func­tional fit­ness pro­gram designed specif­i­cally to improve the strength, flex­i­bil­ity and endurance of the phys­i­cal motions asso­ci­ated with the golf swing. Sean Cochran, for exam­ple, has devel­oped a wide vari­ety of func­tional fit­ness exer­cises specif­i­cally for golfers (see <a href=“http://www.pgatour.com/writers/sean_cochran/” target=blank”>Sean Cochran. This is a highly intel­li­gent and nec­es­sary approach to fit­ness train­ing, since each sport places unique stresses, ten­sions, and loads on the struc­ture of the body that can, over time, result in degen­er­a­tion if the move­ments are chron­i­cally, thought sub­tlety, destructive.

Func­tional trainng means train­ing the body with inte­grated move­ments that mimic, as much as pos­si­ble, the sport you are train­ing for. In the exam­ple of run­ning, we know that:

1. It occurs one leg at a time;
2. It is ground based;
3. Sta­bil­ity and bal­ance are the guid­ing sys­tem of the power needed for longer stride length which affects speed; and
4. Your core helps con­trol the run­ning movement.

So we need to keep all this in mind when select­ing spe­cific exer­cises.
(iRun Mag­a­zine, Octo­ber 2009)

Why Func­tional Fitness?

A fit­ness pro­gram or exer­cise tech­nique can be dys­func­tional. Peo­ple often injure them­selves through exer­cise. An acute injury occurs sud­denly and results in imme­di­ate pain. A chronic injury is more sub­tle and illu­sive. It occurs through repet­i­tive use and results in deferred pain. Dys­func­tional exer­cise meth­ods and fit­ness pro­grams are a sig­nif­i­cant cause of chronic forms of injury. Since the seri­ous­ness of the injury is only revealed over a long period time, we can often exer­cise in ways that cre­ate the illu­sion of being ben­e­fi­cial, when in fact they are inju­ri­ous. In other words, it is pos­si­ble that a fit­ness pro­gram is abu­sive to the body.

Many injuries do not reveal them­selves imme­di­ately, instead the low lev­els of inflam­ma­tion cre­ated by dys­func­tional exer­cise rou­tines slowly increase over time until pain becomes chronic. These are chronic forms of injur­ing the body, or repet­i­tive use injuries, in which spe­cific areas of the body are immersed in low lev­els of inflam­ma­tion due to micro-tears in the tis­sue. Over time, these micro-tears degen­er­ate the integrity of our joints and low level pain even­tu­ally morphs into degen­er­a­tive arthri­tis. In describ­ing incor­rect stretch­ing meth­ods, Dr. Steven Stark [1] offers a pow­er­ful descrip­tion of this sub­tle yet intensely destruc­tive process:

The weak­ened and elon­gated lig­a­ments (from incor­rect stretch­ing rou­tines) are no longer able to sta­bi­lize the bones of the joint prop­erly, which results in hyper­mo­bil­ity of the joint. This exces­sive joint motion causes joint trauma and chronic inflam­ma­tion. The chronic inflam­ma­tion results in the grad­ual destruc­tion of the joint car­ti­lage. The destruc­tion of the joint car­ti­lage is called degen­er­a­tive arthri­tis (osteoarthri­tis). (Stark, 1999.)

This means that exer­cise can be highly destruc­tive over time when done incor­rectly, even though we may believe we are improv­ing our fit­ness. A func­tional fit­ness pro­gram orig­i­nates in ideas about struc­tural integrity, pos­tural integrity, bal­anced mus­cu­lar devel­op­ment, cor­rect stretch­ing tech­niques, injury pre­ven­tion, align­ment and pre­ci­sion of motion. In other words, func­tional fit­ness is akin to phys­io­ther­apy with the excep­tion that we do not need to be recov­er­ing from an injury; func­tional fit­ness is both life­long and lifewide.

One of the most impor­tant aspects of a func­tional fit­ness pro­gram is that is specif­i­cally designed to elim­i­nate chronic, or repet­i­tive use, injuries. In other words, func­tional fit­ness pro­grams serve to increase the strength and flex­i­bil­ity of the nat­ural func­tion­ing of the body. There is a great need for fit­ness pro­grams that focus on devel­op­ing bal­anced strength and flex­i­bil­ity asso­ci­ated with cor­rect func­tional movement.

Today we find func­tional fit­ness rou­tines largely in the realm of phys­io­ther­apy, that is, exer­cises designed specif­i­cally to help heal and repair an injury. Dur­ing my six months of reha­bil­i­ta­tion after an ACL recon­struc­tion I learned the crit­i­cal impor­tance of exer­cis­ing intel­li­gently and in a man­ner that sup­ports, not injures, joints, ten­dons, lig­a­ments, car­ti­lage, bones, and mus­cles. My knees are imme­di­ate reminders that I have been using them incor­rectly and I main­tain a rou­tine of exer­cises designed specif­i­cally to strengthen and pro­tect my knees (see Pos­ture: Patel­lafemoral Pain Syn­drome (PFS)). Wait­ing for an injury to occur is not a good strat­egy for learn­ing the value of func­tional fitness.

The Five Prin­ci­ples of Func­tional Fitness

The five prin­ci­ples of func­tional fit­ness orig­i­nate in: 1) Pos­ture, 2) Breath­ing, 3) Core, 4) Mobil­ity, and 5) Integration.

A prin­ci­ple is a fun­da­men­tal assump­tion or truth. Prin­ci­ples need to be clearly estab­lished at the out­set in order for a func­tional fit­ness pro­gram to be cre­ated oth­er­wise we will likely cre­ate a series of loosely cou­pled exer­cises that lack integrity. The prin­ci­ples of func­tional fit­ness I have iden­ti­fied as the basis for the design of my own pro­gram focus on pos­ture, breath­ing, core move­ment, mobil­ity, inte­gra­tive expertise.

1. Pos­ture is Fun­da­men­tal to Align­ing Our­selves Through­out Life: Pos­ture is the essence of how we move through any activ­ity in life. Regard­less of what we are doing, if our pos­ture is incor­rect or weak we will not per­form well and are exposed to injury. Pos­ture is not sta­tic, it is dynamic. Our pos­ture is revealed in the way in which we ori­ent our­selves to every­day life. Pos­ture, most impor­tantly, is an inquiry into the dynam­ics of move­ment and the nature of human embod­i­ment(See Explor­ing Life Theme: Pos­ture)
2. Breath­ing is the Essence of Phys­i­cal, Men­tal, Emo­tional and Spir­i­tual Aware­ness: Breath­ing deeply affects the qual­ity and con­di­tion of our body, mind, emo­tions and spirit. Breath­ing and pos­ture are insep­a­ra­ble. To breathe poorly is to have poor pos­ture; to have poor pos­ture means to breath poorly. Learn­ing to breathe prop­erly and to strengthen the breath through the con­flu­ence of every­day life is essen­tial to func­tional fit­ness. Many fit­ness pro­grams treat breath­ing in a cur­sory man­ner by offer­ing some basic ideas about inhal­ing and exhal­ing. This is sim­ply inad­e­quate. (See Explor­ing Life Theme: Breath­ing)
3. All Move­ment Orig­i­nates in the Core of the Body: The core area, or cen­tre, of the body is the site of the inter­nal organs. The core area includes the entire area from the diaphragm down to the base of the pelvis. (See Explor­ing Life: Func­tional Fit­ness — Pos­ture — The Core Area) Core devel­op­ment means the inte­grated and coor­di­nated devel­op­ment of mus­cles, inter­nal organs, pos­ture, and breath­ing. To have a strong and flex­i­ble core means some­thing sig­nif­i­cantly more than have strong and flex­i­ble abdom­i­nal mus­cles (though this is impor­tant); a strong core means that all move­ment is pre­cise, aligned, open, rhyth­mic and free. One of the most impor­tant sources for core devel­op­ment is Pilates (see Explor­ing Life — Func­tional Fitness-Pilates)
4. The Ulti­mate Tar­get of Func­tional Fit­ness is Mobil­ity: Func­tional fit­ness embraces the anatomy of move­ment. It is a pro­gram of exer­cise designed to strengthen and sup­port spe­cific kinds of move­ments in life (walk­ing, stand­ing, sit­ting, lift­ing, reach­ing, etc.). Exer­cise, there­fore, have a direct cor­re­la­tion to spe­cific move­ments in every­day life. There­fore, the exer­cises must nat­u­rally influ­ence and tran­si­tion into the desired motion. If for exam­ple we are attempt­ing to make a cor­rec­tion in our gait, then spe­cific exer­cise would be used that even­tu­ally blend into the act of walk­ing itself.
5. Func­tional Fit­ness is Nat­u­rally Inte­gra­tive: The cre­ation of a func­tional fit­ness pro­gram is inte­gra­tive in nature, that is, knowl­edge and meth­ods used in a wide vari­ety of dis­ci­plines are the raw mate­ri­als for func­tional fit­ness. Func­tional fit­ness would there­fore draw ideas from meth­ods such as Pilates, yoga, phys­io­ther­apy, struc­tural inte­gra­tion (Rolf­ing), sport spe­cific train­ing meth­ods (e.g. golf, run­ning), as well as incor­po­rat­ing knowl­edge from dis­ci­plines such as bio­me­chan­ics, biofeed­back, mind­ful­ness, chi­ro­prac­tic, the anatomy of move­ment, train­ing devices, and sports med­i­cine (espe­cially injury repair and pre­ven­tion).
   Fur­ther, body move­ment itself is nat­u­rally inte­gra­tive and there­fore func­tional fit­ness does not focus on iso­lat­ing mus­cle groups, but instead is designed to facil­i­tate move­ment in a bal­anced man­ner across a range of mus­cle groups. A key idea here is to prac­tice exer­cises that focus on “oppo­site” motions. For exam­ple, if we prac­tice the Pilates Roll-Up (a sit-up tech­nique spe­cific to Pilates), we should imme­di­ately fol­low this with an exer­cise designed to extend the back in the oppo­site direc­tion. This is the only real way to achieve mus­cu­lar bal­ance and coordination.

Apply­ing the Five Prin­ci­ples of Func­tional Fitness

What do we apply the five prin­ci­ples to in a func­tional fit­ness pro­gram. There are three basic areas to con­sider: a) fun­da­men­tal move­ments and posi­tions we find our­selves in every­day life; b) move­ments con­fined by spe­cific injuries or imbal­ances in an individual’s body; and c) move­ments asso­ci­ated with high per­for­mance (or ath­letic) activities.

Fun­da­men­tal Move­ments: The first level of a func­tional fit­ness pro­gram is focused on basic move­ment and body posi­tions that we all inevitably expe­ri­ence through­out our lives. These three gen­eral ori­en­ta­tions to move­ment and posi­tions are:

• Recum­bent: Posi­tions and move­ments while body is lying down, as well as par­tial recum­bent posi­tions (e.g. — plank position);
• Seated: Chair, Floor, var­i­ous leg/torso positions;
• Upright: Stand­ing / Squat­ting / Bend­ing / Lift­ing / Reaching/ Walk­ing / Running.

Prec­sion, bal­ance and laign­ment through­out all of the above posi­tions and move­ments should be taught at an early age in life and con­stantly improved upon through­out our entire lives. This is the base­line level of func­tional fit­ness. Since the vast major­ity of our time is spent in engag­ing in these move­ments, it com­mon sense to con­clude that these are the most impor­tant start­ing point for any fit­ness program.

Con­fined or Restricted Move­ments: If a per­son has a knee injury their abil­ity to move that part of their body is con­fined by the nature of the injury. Func­tional fit­ness exer­cises can be devel­oped to help heal the injury, and more impor­tantly to help cor­rect the orig­i­nal cause of the injury (unless of course the injury was acute).

Sim­i­larly, an indi­vid­ual may be con­fined by mus­cu­lar imbal­ances, a prob­lem com­mon to men, in which some mus­cles are sig­nif­i­cantly more devel­oped than oth­ers in terms of strength and flex­i­ble, which in turn increases the risk of chronic injury and degeneration.

Tar­get­ing Unique Move­ments: The next level of Func­tional Fit­ness could be more activ­ity spe­cific. For exam­ple, the golf swing requires a com­plex move­ment around the axis of the spine that, if done incor­rectly, can result in chronic injuries. A func­tional fit­ness pro­gram cus­tomized for golf would include a range of cor­rec­tive exer­cises that serve to pre­serve the body while improv­ing the qual­ity of the golfer’s swing motion. Sean Cochran offers the fol­low­ing insight into func­tional training:

The golf swing is a “total body move­ment” which incor­po­rates every mus­cle, lig­a­ment, and joint in your body to exe­cute the swing. As a result, it is best to train the body as a unit, inte­grat­ing the entire neu­ro­mus­cu­lar sys­tem in your golf fit­ness pro­gram rather than iso­lat­ing spe­cific mus­cle groups.

With that being said, tra­di­tional weight train­ing where a sin­gle mus­cle group is trained with high vol­umes may not be ideal for the golfer. A train­ing approach where the entire body is inte­grated into the move­ment pat­terns, ath­letic posi­tions, and mus­cu­lar require­ments of the swing would pro­vide greater benefit.

Func­tional train­ing incor­po­rates this con­cept where the entire neu­ro­mus­cu­lar sys­tem is trained to the anatom­i­cal posi­tions, ath­letic move­ment pat­terns, and phys­i­cal require­ments of the athlete’s cho­sen sport. If the athlete’s cho­sen sport is golf, then this indi­vid­ual would be best suited to train with an exer­cise pro­gram inte­grat­ing the entire neu­ro­mus­cu­lar sys­tem to the anatom­i­cal posi­tions, move­ment pat­terns, and mus­cu­lar require­ments of the golf swing. Cochran: Total Body Func­tional Exer­cises, Part 1

Total body move­ment: Like Cochran, I pre­fer to think of any body move­ment as a “total body move­ment” since, in fact, the entire body is always involved in any motion to some degree. Fur­ther, mus­cu­lar coor­di­na­tion across a range of motion is more impor­tant than iso­lat­ing the strength of a sin­gle mus­cle group in a more lim­ited range of motion. Posi­tions whether in a golf swing or in walk­ing, are abstract notions only — we are always mov­ing through them in a con­stant dynamic.

There is never any­thing sta­tic about the human body, it is always in motion to some degree. It is there­fore more impor­tant to strengthen and increase the flex­i­bil­ity of inte­grated ranges of motion, whether gen­eral motions such as walk­ing or sport spe­cific such as golf. Lift­ing weights to increase the strength of our quadri­ceps, for exam­ple, has very lit­tle ben­e­fit to either walk­ing or golf, and may in fact inhibit our motion over time if it is not done within the con­text of a total body movement.

Inte­grat­ing func­tional fit­ness exer­cises in every­day move­ment is essen­tial: All func­tional fit­ness exer­cises are specif­i­cally designed to improve a par­tic­u­lar kind of motion made by the body. If, for exam­ple, exer­cises were being used to help cor­rect a prob­lem with a person’s gait, then the inte­gra­tion of those exer­cises means that the way in which the per­son walks in every­day life is even­tu­ally changed per­ma­nently. With­out this kind of trans­fer­ence, the ben­e­fit of the exer­cises is minimized.

Notes

1. Also see Dr. Steven Stark’s website