Functional Training: Who Benefits and Why? - Georgy Yolgin

Currently, there is a strong tendency among athletes and sports fans towards functional training - exercises based on rhythmic gymnastics. This trend has gained popularity for a reason. Many people get injured during exercise due to poor mobility and limited flexibility. Therefore, it is important to focus on the correct moving technique, not only on lifting weights. With functional training, there are more opportunities to enjoy exercise and improve balance and physical intelligence.

In the gym, you can see men with large inward-turned shoulders and chest, huge biceps, but unequal triceps. Such a discrepancy indicates an imbalance between physical build and body strength, which can subsequently lead to health problems.

Functional training engages the entire body, resulting in an even and well-balanced muscle tone throughout the body, maintaining overall fitness. Thanks to the uniform build-up of muscle strength, joints are not subject to deformation, and as a result, injuries and joint problems are prevented.

Functional training is an exercise system that trains the body to perform daily activities. This kind of training allows you to effectively reduce body weight, improve body proportions, tone and muscle relief.

Functional training includes speed-strength exercises, strength endurance and coordination exercises in the form of circuit training. Exercises are performed with your own body weight and various weights on unstable surfaces with relocation.

Initially, functional training was introduced as a set of rehabilitation exercises.

This approach is currently used by occupational therapists, physical therapists and chiropractors for the functional adaptation of patients with movement disorders. The set of exercises is designed to provide functional independence in such a way as to include specific practices and tasks in areas important for patients.

For example, treatment can include exercises that simulate daily activities of patients at home or work. Of course, the purpose of such medical manipulations is to help patients adapt as soon as possible to the conditions of their normal life or work in the post-traumatic or postoperative period.

Functional training method can be used either without special equipment, or with a variety of auxiliary devices, to achieve the greatest progress and add variety to the training process. These can be, for example, clubs, barbells, kettlebells and dumbbells (you can use your own body weight), barriers, resistance tubes, yokes, slides, balance discs and steppers, ropes, sandbags, suspension (TRX), plyometric bollards, gymnastic sticks, medicine balls or water balls, as well as vibration machines.

Components of functional exercise program

The most effective functional training program should include a number of elements that should be adapted to the individual needs and goals.

Based on functional tasks aimed at daily activities, the program should be:

A team of scientists led by Master N. Foley has empirically proved that functional training for the purpose of performing specific tasks leads to the restoration of damaged neural networks of the cerebral cortex responsible for the performance of a particular task.

According to the results of the study by J. Blennerhassett and W. Dite, patients make the greatest progress in performing functional tasks that they performed during rehabilitation. Because they are more likely to keep on completing these tasks in their daily lives, they will achieve better results when followed up.

Personal trainer Georgy Yolgin.