Getting Outside the Box: The Definition of Functional Strength

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The following is a guest post by Katie Chasey of RXBound.com:

How is strength defined and who defines it?

Kinesiologists study muscles and have various ways to gauge muscle contraction, length, tension, and force. Therefore, kinesiologists typically measure strength by these primary factors and neglect individual variations of strength as a subjective concept. Whether one can lift X number of pounds overhead is meaningless in the overall definition of functional strength. Functional strength is the strength that gets us through life and daily survival.

Lifting a heavy load overhead is a fantastic measure for Hercules or the competitive weightlifter but the history of manual labor has consisted of something very different. Manual labor typically involved walking, running, pushing, pulling, and grasping. Take a minute to think back to your history books and those photos of the grueling pushing and pulling of primitive mechanical devices and the relentless building of the pyramids, to name just a couple.

What is wrong with “strength” as defined by Olympic weightlifting?

Absolutely nothing. I love it. I train with it, I teach it, and I encourage it. There is no better feeling than watching my athletes hit personal records of lifting heavy loads. Weight lifting (Olympic or not) has military value and athletic value. It increases stamina and power output. The technical skill that goes with the training behind it (Olympic lifting in particular) is second to none. For the sake of this article, however, I am not referring to this definition of strength, but rather I am talking about daily functional strength and the movement involved with everyday people living their natural lives. So what is this definition of strength? It is not very exciting unfortunately, but equally as important as load-lifting strength.

What is functional strength?

Functional strength is the ability to run your load-joints (shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles) through a full range of motion without pain, stiffness, or restriction. This is also known as load-joint articulation.

What is the goal of functional strength?

Load-joints must be able to open and close in a full range of pain-free motion. How does this work in a couch-potato environment where we are no longer pushing primitive machines around? It comes through movement. In today’s undemanding environment, we get stuck in a “box” of doing the same motions over and over again. We are no longer spontaneously stimulated by our environment, as we once were. More and more people are replacing the days’ motions with “work” (computers and typing, talking on the phone, and driving) or “recreation” (watching TV or playing video games), so we need to find ways to alter our environment in order to keep our load-bearing structure active and healthy.

Read More HERE

Functional Fitness for what?

That's a great question.  The point is that functional fitness IS for something.

Its not cosmetic. Its not for a number on a particular movement.

Skill, stamina and strength

"Strong people harder to kill and more useful in general"
- Mark Rippetoe

In order to be of use to others we first have to take care of ourselves.  

The ideal of functional fitness is the self sufficiency, ability and resiliency to do what needs to be done.  What needs to be done varies by your personal context, goals and ambition.  For a firefighter, police man or woman or the military the thing needing to be done might be extreme. For an athlete the thing right test the bounds of human capability.  For you and me it might be keeping up with the kids, improving our capability bit by bit. As we age it might be the ability to remain independent, the strength to get up and down the stairs, the ability to get off of the toilet by ourselves, get off of the floor under our own power after a fall or the ability to fun for help for an injured spouse or neighbor.

Ground to Overhead, knees out, very nicely done!

It knowing how to do something but also the strength, skill and stamina to do it.

Functional Strength

We're not talking about your max bench press here.  Were not talking about benching double or triple you bodyweight.  Those numbers are nice to talk about in the gym and can be meaningful goals for some of us. Maintaining muscle mass has inherent health benefits, especially for our older population.

Were talking about strength applied in the real world.

Learn to Deadlift Properly and you will always know how to lift something
safely.  NOT like this.

Take away the fancy machine, take away the implement (in this case a barbell and a nicely cushioned bench) and think about the real world.  Rarely are you going to be asked to lie down on a bench and lift and weight straight upward.  It doesn't happen like that.  You have to lift the laundry from the ground with your feet planted on the floor (closed chain movement).  For the athlete you may be called on to push a large lineman out of your way, again with feet planted on the ground, transferring force through you core, with a stable spine acting as an effective transmission of the power, pushing with your arms(again closed chain).

In the real world you will climb, pull as often as you push, run, jump.  Many of us are lacking the pull strength in relation to our pushing strength. 

Your core is the stabilizer and transmission of all of this power acting through your full kinetic chain to your extremities.  No amount of crunches will train this critical aspect of the core.

Here’s the National Academy of Sports Medicine’s take on it:
“All functional movement patterns involve deceleration, stabilisation and acceleration, which occur at every joint in the kinetic chain and in all three planes of motion.”

Primal Patterns

The movements we are talking about are something Paul Chek calls “Primal Patterns,” which are functional movements that our primal ancestors used in their daily lives to survive.

These seven movements are Squat, Lunge, Push, Pull, Bend, Twist and Gait.  (I omitted a few from my previous post Primal Exercises Everyone Should Do, primarily because I am terrible with lunges, but am working on them; but Chek is absolutely right).

Just think how many times a day you have performed these basic movements. Walking up the stairs: lunges. Sitting: squatting.  Gait: walking, running.

This is something Cross fit mostly gets right, in fact what it was founded on.  As Crossfit changes and becomes more marketable as "the Sport of Fitness" it may become more about skilled movements to narrow the field to 'elites' but I hope not. The more Crossfit moves toward 'party tricks' and away from functional movements, I fear the more it loses much of it's original attraction as a general conditioning program.

For example the double under(one of my goats), what next the triple under?

One of the more difficult movements, the Muscle Up, does have a functional purpose.  It the movement you need to get up and over an obstacle above you head from a dead hang.

"You’ll be able to surmount any object on which you can get a finger hold—if you can touch it you can get up on it.  The value here for survival, police, fire fighter, and military use is impossible to overstate."- Coach Greg Glassman

This need to be ready for anything, to survive, is the basis for much of the Crossfit philosophy.

“Our specialty,” according to Coach Glassman, “is not specializing.  Combat, survival, many sports, and life reward this kind of fitness and, on average, punish the specialist.”

The true measure of physical strength is not some arbitrary number representing how much weight you can lift on an invented machine or implement, but how many Pull-ups, Push-ups, Squats, Dips and Lunges you can do and how well you move, run, jump and walk.  Functional fitness for readiness for events of or ordinary lives.  Not necessarily just preparing for the ordinary bu preparing for the extraordinary that we all may be called to do on occasion.  

Additional Resources and reading

How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy

 

http://www.amazon.com/How-Eat-Move-Be-Healthy/dp/1583870067/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y

Primal Exercises Everyone Should Do

These aren't "invented exercises" these are movements that we all are called up to do everyday in our activities of daily life.

Primal Movement Concept

Lets look at what you would have been doing, say 10,00 years ago in your daily life:
Walking long distances to find food and water.
Running to catch prey or running to avoid being prey.
Chopping down, splitting and moving wood.
Building things, with your hands and basic tools

All of which are multi-joint compound movements.

This model is different from what the typical globo-gym/big box goer does today.  His life is primarily sedentary with occasional, lets say 3 gym visits per week. When he does go to the gym he sits on machines that guide and help move the weight for him. Think about the guys doing bench presses and curls (every Monday, which seems to be National Bench Press Day) his muscles tend to be imbalanced due to too much pressing and not enough pulling.  His legs are underdeveloped (remember squats are hard).  Or think about the runner who does nothing but run, or the cardio queen who puts in hours on the elliptical.

Our bodies are an amazingly complex web of interconnected muscles, joints, fascia, ligaments, tendons, bones, and other tissues and organs that work synchronously and seamlessly. When we are lean and fit, every cubic centimeter of our bodies has a purpose, a function to help us survive and thrive.

So, if the body is this interconnected web that’s really more like one unit, one muscle, why would we focus on only one muscle group during a workout or one type of exercise activity? The idea of focusing on only one muscle group in a workout is definitely not efficient, nor is it athletic. At Functional Fitness and Performance we believe you should focus on movement patterns, not muscle groups, when exercising to develop a functionally strong body. At its core, exercise is all about movement.

We’re laying out the 7 basic, primal movement patterns you should use at least once per week and that form the foundation of the workouts & exercise programs we develop.

Movement Pattern #1: Squat

A squat is a movement pattern where you plant both feet on the ground, then bend your legs to lower your body down while keeping your chest up and lower back straight. We use squats in our daily life such as squatting in and out of a chair. As we age, an inability to squat can very negatively affect our quality of life.

As an exercise, you can provide resistance to a squat from the front of your body (like holding a dumbbell or kettlebell, called a goblet squat), on your back with a barbell, from the sides holding dumbbells, or on the entire upper body by wearing a weighted vest. With each method of resistance, the lower back and abs must contract to keep the body upright as the body is lowered down. The most common reason why people have trouble squatting is because of tight hip flexors or tight calves.

Squat Exercise Examples:

Air Squat
Goblet Squat
Back Squat
Front Squats - Upcoming in the Squat Series Squats Part 6, for now look at this link

Primal Movement Pattern #2: Push

A pushing exercise requires pushing external weight away from your body, or your center of mass away from the ground, like in a push up. Pushing yourself off the ground to get up, or pushing a toolbox overhead to put it away in a cabinet, are both pushing movements used in our daily life.

There are two primary types of pushing movements (1) vertical push and (2) horizontal push.2 A vertical push is a DB shoulder press where you press a dumbbell vertically over your head. A horizontal push is pushing a weight away from your horizontally, like in a DB Chest Press as you lay back on a bench. A vertical press tends to emphasize your shoulder muscles while engaging the back of the arms (triceps) while a horizontal press emphasizes the chest, while engaging the shoulders and the back of the arms.

Exercise Examples:

Push Ups
Barbell Shoulder Press
DB Incline Press

Primal Movement Pattern #3: Pull

A pulling motion is the opposite of a pushing motion, in that you are pulling a weight towards your body, or pulling your center of mass toward an object, like in a pull up. From pulling down a branch to reaching for an apple, to starting that old boat motor, pulling is a movement we use our daily lives.

There are two primary pulling movements, a (1) vertical pull and (2) horizontal pull. An example of a vertical pull is a pull up, which is a classic exercise that develops strength in your back, shoulders, biceps, and even core. An example of a horizontal pulling motion is a single arm dumbbell row.

Exercise Examples:

Pull Ups
TRX Body Row
Single Arm DB Row

Movement Pattern #4: Twist

Of all the exercises listed so far, they are completed in two planes of movement, either forward, or to the side (saggital and frontal planes). But there is a third plane of motion which makes exercise much more functional – the transverse plane, or twisting motion.

If you think about lunging down and reaching across your body, or throwing a ball, running, or even walking, most human movement has some element of a rotation involved. The problem, however, is that most exercises we do in the gym have no rotational component.

There are two primary types of twisting, or rotational movements: (1) rotational and (2) anti-rotational. Rotational movements are the basic twisting exercises, such as twisting to throw a ball. Anti-rotation are exercises where the rotational movement is prevented, like in a paloff press, or a single arm DB row.

Exercise Examples:

Cable Wood Chops
Palloff Press
Medicine Ball Throws (standing sideways against a wall)

Movement Pattern #5: Bend

Bending is a movement pattern where you bend your torso by hinging your hips. A very common movement, we use it in our daily lives by picking up a baby off the ground to trying to lift that heavy suit case.

Bearing the brunt of the weight on your hips, glutes, and legs is the key to lifting weight in a bent over position. This is done by keeping your low back in a neutral, to slightly arched position, as you bend over to lift an object off the ground. If you round your back, significant pressure can be put on your intervertabral disks, which may cause a disk herniation.

Exercise Examples:

Kettlebell Deadlift
DB Clean and Press
DB Stiff Legged Deadlifts
Deadlift

Movement Pattern #6: Gait / Combination

Walking, jogging, or sprinting is called a gait, which requires pulling, lunging, and twisting motions to propel the body forward. Whether you are sprinting to catch the train, or walking in the park, gait is the most frequently used of all the movement patterns in our daily lives. This last movement pattern is a catch all for dynamic human movement and combinations of movements. For example, jumping, cutting, crawling, and other movements and combinations of movements can be added to this category.

Exercise Examples:

Walking
Jogging
Jumping

I hope this was a helpful overview that will help you think about exercise in terms of movement patterns, not just muscle groups. Your body will thank you as it becomes stronger, leaner, and better balanced.

Functional Fitness, Training and Movements

What do we mean when we talk about functional movements, or functional fitness?

See Also Wikipedia: Functional Training

Functional movements are those that most closely mimic the movements we do in our activities of everyday life.   For normal people they include the movements and activities of everyday life, being able to safely and effectively perform their everyday activities.  For the military, police or fire fighters the principles are still the same but the scope of everyday activities will be much larger.  For athletes with, specific goals, they include the movements that most closely mimic those they will be performing in their sports or events. Doing them in a gym setting allows allows us several advantages over doing the traditional machine based circuit training or steady state cardio typically found in most "Globo-Gyms".

Examples of functional movements include squats, dead lifts (simply pulling a weight off of the ground), pushing movements(bench press, standing press, push up, etc), pulling exercises such as seated row, pull up, pull down.  Functional movements also include walking, running, biking, rowing, jumping, etc.  Think of how a child runs around a play ground, picks things up, puts them down, hangs, pulls, pushes and generally how they interact with their physical environment.  That quality of movement is what we want to recapture as adults and improve on as athletes.

Possibly the most fundamental functional exercise is the squat. I see people day in and day out who are intimated buy the idea of a squat. We squat multiple times everyday in or normal lives.It is something everyone needs to be able to do safely and well without pain or discomfort. Every time you get up and down off of the toilet, every time you sit in a chair and at least partially the ability to get off of the floor involves a partial squat movement in at least one leg.  When we can no longer perform this basic motion the quality of life take a dramatic downward turn.  It's a matter of life safety to be able to get off of the floor.

The squat is one of the most natural motions your body was meant to do, but somehow very few people in many gyms today squat.  In many cultures the bottom position of the squat is the standard sitting position.  This is a most natural position, a child can do it with no problem.  As we become older and sit more we lose the hip mobility to get in this position and the fear of knee pain predominates.  The irony is that a properly executed squat is one of the best things you can do to avoid or eliminate knee pain.  I have people see me all of the time who tell me that they cannot squat, I ask them to show me a squat, and they show me something very different

than a proper squat.  No wonder the resulting knee pain.  I have worked with people who definitively told me they could not squat in most all cases, barring a physical/medical limitation they have been able to acheive a squat in 3-6 months max.

Movement Quality 

Your body develops motor patterns(adapts) to accommodate the movements that you perform in everyday life and those that you practice in the gym. The gym, with a good coach can be the laboratory to explore your current movement patterns and practice changes.  The best way to do that is to see how you move under applied stress.  In this case the applied stress is either load(weights, metabolic demand, motor control (coordination).

Using the squat as an example, often the first thing done is to look at the squat movement with no load, an "air squat".  Using this movement as a starting point a good coach can begin to suggest movement changes (Straight back, externally rotated knees. vertical shins, etc).  Once the air squat is mastered typically an appropriate load will be applied and poor movement patterns will again become evident.  To be continued in part two of this post.

We will also talk MUCH more about squats in upcoming posts, in the meantime if you want to get started take a look at:

Functional fitness is also perfectly suited to rehab(after an injury) and prehab(working to correct a movement pattern before injury occurs) - To be discussed in depth in a future post.

One final thought....

We Are All Athletes

In this blog I will use athletes to describe anyone who wants to improve their physical interaction with their environment.  In this context we are all athletes to varying degrees.  From the octogenarian who simply wants to improve his daily movement and mobility to the Olympian or NCAA athlete striving for a gold medal or National record.  We are all athletes to some degree and we should all train as athletes, within our ability. 

Upcoming: Differences between Functional Training and Machine Based Training