Functional exercise is a term I’m sure you have heard before. But do you really know what it means? Any online search will result in definitions galore, from complex to simple. Because of the many questions, I receive regarding exercise I wanted to explain this important way of training.
Many fitness coaches approach training from this functional training school of thought, while others work from the traditional strength training or bodybuilding format. I myself am glad that we can provide many types and combinations of approaches to fitness for our members.
Functional exercise training came on the fitness scene many years ago from the field of physical therapy. Physical Therapist Gary Gray is often regarded as the father of functional training in the way that he rehabilitates his patients and progressed them to fitness training.
Athletic Trainers most often use functional training when rehabilitating athletes and getting them back on to the playing field. Subsequently, functional training has moved into the fitness arena over the years. Which I believe is a very important development.
Functional training simply refers to using exercises or developing exercise programs that mimic daily activities, a specific task, or sport. That is, the way we function in normal life.
For example, when I had a patient in therapy that needed to return to a physical job of lifting something from the floor, turning and placing it on a shelf, I would choose functional exercises that will help him return to that activity. So with this example, it would be much better to choose a functional exercise to build leg strength, rather than sitting on a leg extension machine & kicking the leg up against resistance.
We take many factors into account when choosing exercises and developing personal training programs, including but not limited to goals and daily activities.
Tri-planar Movement
Tri-planar movement or motion may be a term that you have heard being used in the realm of fitness or physical therapy. This is an important concept that everyone needs to understand. Let me elaborate.
As humans, we were made in a very unique way, and were given the gift of moving and functioning in thousands of different ways. This movement is looked at by the health care & fitness professional as moving in 3 distinct planes of motion.
The three planes of motion we use when moving are:
Sagittal plane – our entire body and body parts move forward and backward
Frontal Plane – our entire body and body parts move side-to-side.
Transverse plane – our entire body and body parts can twist and rotate
It is important to know that we use all three of these planes separately, and together during human function. Additionally each joint in our body was made to move in all three planes of motion at varying degrees.
Everyone has heard how our entire body is interconnected. Well, that is super important when it comes to functional movement and performing the activities we loved to do. For example, if you have a stiff or injured ankle, it can diminish the proper function of the entire body. Therefore resulting in possible problems somewhere else in the body.
We were all made to move and to feel good when we do move, that’s why corrective exercise and functional training go together when we develop exercise programs.
Movement turns on our proprioceptors (that’s a topic for another day), proprioceptors turn on our muscles to activate in a certain way. Therefore we are able to move the way we want.
The major point of this article is to emphasize the idea that we need to exercise and train in a functional way. For example, people like to train the core because they heard it was important or want to trim their waistline. However, what I often see in the gym is core training in only one plane of the three planes of motion I described above. Our body functions in three planes therefore, we should move and train in all three planes.
For more information feel free to ask any of our personal trainers about functional training or functional exercises that would be appropriate for you. And stay tuned for a follow-up article regarding how to do functional exercising.