Recently some trainers have moved away from traditional strength training and power movements, and started training with a style they call “functional fitness.” While carry over to the specific activity you are training for is important, this new training method is often misguided.
Not All “Functional” Movements Are…Functional
Often, functional exercises involve overly complex movements that take a long time to master and can never be loaded very heavy. These limitations prevent the athletes from becoming stronger and more durable, and lead to wasted training time.
One of the best ways to make athletes more resilient is to make them strong through a full range of motion. This means choosing movements that allow for significant loading and involve multiple joints. The deadlift, squat, bench press, rowing variations, and lunge variations check all of these boxes, but they don’t have the novelty of squatting on a stability ball, draped in chains, holding an kettlebell.
A 2003 study performed by Askling et. al, showed a reduction in hamstring injuries to soccer players who performed a preseason strength training program with an eccentric overload focus on the hamstrings, compared to the non-training group. Hamstring injuries are often the result of a lack of eccentric strength, so shoring up this area of weakness would seem to be an obvious way of increasing an athlete’s durability, however, some coaches will still choose novel movements over proven methods.
One of these novel training options is unstable surface training.
Unstable surface training is a big part of the functional fitness trend and unsurprisingly, it sucks. Many coaches think balance can be improved through unstable surface training, but balance improvements tend to be situationally specific. For example, if you play your sport on firm, stable ground, you are unlikely to see balance improvements carry over from unstable surface training.
Additionally, unstable surface training can actually hinder performance improvements by reducing the improvements in power output. A 2007 study by Cressey et. al. used two groups of healthy Division I men’s soccer players, Cressey et al. measured bounce drop jump height, countermovement jump height, 40yd dash time, 10yd dash time, and T-test time before and after the intervention, with and without unstable surface training methods. The unstable surface training group added movements performed on inflatable rubber discs to the end of their normal training program, while the control group performed the same movements on a stable surface. Both groups showed improvements across the board, however, the stable surface group showed greater improvements. So, while unstable surface training may have benefits in a rehabilitation setting, it may hinder the performance improvements of healthy athletes.
Keeping it simple with compound movements (on stable surfaces) is great, but not all of your movements need to be of the multi-joint variety. Isolation movements have gotten a bad rap as a result of this shift to “functional” training, since they don’t involve as many muscles, and the movements themselves don’t show the same obvious carry over that a compound movement such as a lunge does, for example.
Isolation Movements Can Be Functional…GASP
One isolation movement in particular that’s gotten unfairly bashed by some “sports performance” coaches in the recent past is the leg extension. I agree that for many athletes there are better ways to spend their time, but for some the inclusion of that movement may be warranted and necessary. For example, if an athlete is coming off some kind of injury and is limited in terms of what they are cleared to do, the leg extension may be a solid option. Also, in that same vein, if an athlete is coming off a lower body injury and has significant atrophy in one of the quads, the inclusion of this as a single leg variation at the end of a training session could have significant hypertrophy benefits. And, since greater muscle cross-sectional-area correlates with greater strength, this resulting hypertrophy would lead to an increase in strength that would be very…functional.
Overall, if you keep your training simple, maintain or improve your mobility, and increase your strength through a full range of motion, your sports performance will probably improve.
Resources
Askling et. al. Hamstring injury occurence in elite soccer players after preseason strength training with eccentric overload. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2003 Aug;13(4):244-50.
Cressey, E. et al. The effects of ten weeks of lower-body unstable surface training on markers of athletic performance. J Strength Cond Res.21(2):561-7. 2007.