Mary at CrossFit in Rockwall

Recently I (Marla) met a lady who does functional training.  She allowed me to take a tour of her gym and explained what’s unique about this kind of training.  I invited her to help the Full Circle Health readers understand what’s unique about this perspective of exercise. Please leave a comment of thanks after reading and checking out the cool video links.

By Personal Trainer Mary Rigney

Functional training is a buzzword used to describe almost every fitness program around. The overuse of the phrase makes it useless without definition. I can tell you that functional training is the best way to train, but you wouldn’t know if I was talking about sitting on stability balls doing bicep curls (note: ridiculous and non-functional) or squatting and pressing (note: awesome and very functional!). Here is a simple test to determine if a movement is functional, or if it’s a waste of your time:

1. Would you see the movement outside of the gym? Many of the machines in traditional gyms focus on movement patterns you would never do outside of the gym. When do you do tricep extensions or leg curls in real life? But how about a squat? A deadlift? We do these every day when we stand up from a chair or pick something up off the ground.
2. Would a caveman do it? Functional exercises aren’t something that were recently invented. They are movements that have been around as long as we have. Picking things up from the ground (deadlifting), running, and jumping have been essential to life forever.
3. Is the movement essential to life? Is there any situation where doing bicep curls on a stability ball is going to get you through the day? No, but being able to squat will if you want to be able to stand up from the toilet.
4. Does the movement originate from the core? Functional training utilizes larger muscle groups (core/hips/back), before smaller muscle groups (arms/legs). Isolating muscles, without using the body as a whole would never be possible in real life.
5. Is the movement compound? Functional movements utilize multiple joints and muscles instead of isolating single muscle groups. Instead of looking at exercises by muscle group, try looking at exercises by function.
   

   CrossFit Rockwall Gym

Here are a few examples of functional movements:

• Squats
• Deadlifts
• Cleans
• Overhead Presses
• Push-ups & Pull-ups
• Throwing & Climbing
• Running & Jumping

Functional movements are important to everyone’s fitness. There is no circumstance of disability, gender, age, stature, weight, or fitness level that reduces the need, safety or effectiveness of functional movement.

So, next time you read about a new “functional training” exercise program, you can put it to the test to see if it really is!

Mary Rigney founded CrossFit Rockwall in August 2007. Formerly an Aerospace Engineer, she decided to follow her passion and open a gym to coach CrossFit full-time.  Find Mary and CrossFit on Facebook here.