"Functional Strength"

[Parker]

I heard this dude use this term in the gym---his workout consisted of pull ups, shadow boxing, dips, more shadow boxing, machine bicep curls, and treadmill work... And the obligatory hoodie.

So, this made me ponder as I am doing delts.
"Isn't all strength "functional"? I mean, you pick up a weight, your muscles are functioning.
Or even the term "functional muscle"---if you cannot move that muscle, or use it, then it ain't functioning.
Now granted, today's competitive bbers gain huge muscles for cosmetic/freakish purposes, and as such, have loss their mobility, or the functional aspect has decreased, but they still function, albeit in some limit form.
So this got me thinking, especially with the olympics, if they (the powers that be) really want to get bbing into the olympics, they must highlight how "functional" those huge muscles are--which dictates smaller, more streamlined phyisques.

Needless to say, I think "functional strength" is a made up term, that is more moronic, once you start to think of it.  

[Coach is Back!]

I heard this dude use this term in the gym---his workout consisted of pull ups, shadow boxing, dips, more shadow boxing, machine bicep curls, and treadmill work... And the obligatory hoodie.

So, this made me ponder as I am doing delts.
"Isn't all strength "functional"? I mean, you pick up a weight, your muscles are functioning.
Or even the term "functional muscle"---if you cannot move that muscle, or use it, then it ain't functioning.
Now granted, today's competitive bbers gain huge muscles for cosmetic/freakish purposes, and as such, have loss their mobility, or the functional aspect has decreased, but they still function, albeit in some limit form.
So this got me thinking, especially with the olympics, if they (the powers that be) really want to get bbing into the olympics, they must highlight how "functional" those huge muscles are--which dictates smaller, more streamlined phyisques.

Needless to say, I think "functional strength" is a made up term, that is more moronic, once you start to think of it.  

Functional training refers to training the movement in multi-planar. Since we rarely (actually we don't) move in isolation (such as a bicep curl machine) I think "functional" is the appropriate word.

[Parker]

Functional training refers to training the movement in multi-planar. Since we rarely (actually we don't) move in isolation (such as a bicep curl machine) I think "functional" is the appropriate word.

Then dude needs to go live on a farm and lift 100 lbs sack of potatoes all day...

You know, I thought of a sport that one could do. It's called the Plow Pull. Where you have a muddy "field" (the thicker the mud the better) have a plow, like the ones they used to have the oxen and workhorses pull. Have two  or more competitors pull said plow up and down the "field", like a race (55 m, 100m, etc).
The competitors can wear workboots or barefoot.

Said race would help develop quads (and stamina) or you'd see more competitors built like sprint cyclists, with big quads, or built like strongmen...

[MikMaq]

Functional training refers to training the movement in multi-planar. Since we rarely (actually we don't) move in isolation (such as a bicep curl machine) I think "functional" is the appropriate word.

Agreed when has anyone ever bench pressed something in real life.

Anyhow there are tons of jobs or sport where a certain type of strength is needed, where one may not be able to bench press fuck all but still be able to work jay cutler into the ground. Height, leverage, body weight, endurance, balance, and wrist strength have a lot to do with this.

[The True Adonis]

All exercises translate into being functional.  Deadlifts for instance, help your lower back if you are bending over working on a Lawn Mower like Sir Johnny or when I changed the flywheel key in my lawnmower.

The functional argument is pure bullshit.

[Fortress]

It's why many huge bodybuilders are extremely strong on isolation-type exercises and/or machines but cannot usually display world-class strength in multi-joint movements.

As is said by another member, the human body functions as a single entity. To not practice total body movement while strengthening individual muscles GREATLY reduces their overall effectiveness.

Let's not forget, too, that a muscle's capacity for function and/or absolute strength is limited by its supporting nervous system. In other words, if an athlete doesn't focus as intently on his CNS conditioning as he does on building big muscles, those big muscles will not ever function to their potential capacity.

It's why smaller powerlifters often outlift massive bodybuilders.

[MAXX]

As The_coatch says your body gets used to lifting in a controlled planar motion. You only target specific muscles following that motion. In sports your'e twisting, turning, moving to the sides etc. etc.. Loads are put on stabilizing tendons, muscles and ligaments.

[oldtimer1]

This is what functional strength is. True doing curls or delt laterals seated in a machine is bs toward athletics it's more than that.

Power is one of the most important commodities in sport. It doesn't matter if you are strong if you can't unleash that strength quickly. Power is often describes as force times velocity.

  If you're a boxer it doesn't matter if you bench 400 lbs and other impressive lifts if you can't release that strength quickly. There are some really soft hitting big number lifters. There are really hard hitting guys that can't bench 250 lbs. If you squat 500 lbs but can't explode that strength quickly you won't be able to dunk or sprint for that matter. Look at a pro golfer when he hits that big drive. Some who are ill informed will say that's technique.  Technique will determine direction and placement but make no mistake that a long drive is an example of power.

  Power is more important in sports than pure strength. Strength does build power to an extent but never confuse power with strength. The term functional strength has been use for awhile yet it's meaning is misunderstood. Most just use the simplistic getting stronger is functional mantra. Functional strength term when used in it's proper context should be talking about increasing power toward an athletic goal.

How do you develop this speed power? First a partial derivative of strength training is an increase in power. As an athlete you should incorporate specific power exercises.  Many who have never done Olympic lifts such as power cleans are surprised to find their sprinting speed and jumping ability go up dramatically. Truth be told Olympic lifting should have been labeled power lifting and power lifting; strength lifting. Sprints and jumps are power exercises. Throwing objects like a shot put or medicine balls increase power. Also hitting a heavy bag is another. Explosive pushups are also good. One of the things that first leave aging athletes is power not strength.

Maybe next time I will cover conditioning. A forgotten commodity in bodybuilding.  All the strength and power is useless if an athlete gases because there is nothing in the tank.

Maybe another future post is these self proclaimed coaches and trainers to the stars. I'm tired of gym owners taking credit for their athletes achievements. I worked with this guy that bought his son a gym. The gym happened to be near a really rich town that many members of a NFL team had homes.  Guess where the only weight lifting gym was near their town? He soon got an incredible reputation as the NFL trainer guru. Now he has division I players from all over the US flying in to him to get themselves ready for the combine. Anyone who makes it in the NFL he takes credit for.  Does he really know his stuff? I would say yes but not as much as he takes credit for.

[Parker]

Agreed when has anyone ever bench pressed something in real life.

Anyhow there are tons of jobs or sport where a certain type of strength is needed, where one may not be able to bench press fuck all but still be able to work jay cutler into the ground. Height, leverage, body weight, endurance, balance, and wrist strength have a lot to do with this.

Bench press or pressing movements---like push ups, or pushing someone out of the way, pushing a plow, lawnmover, gates, even raking,  builds up the pecs. If you have ever raked a huge lawn, and haven't had your pecs sore after that, it's like one of the worse feelings.

My farther grew up on a farm, and I always wondered why he had big arms and shoulders, yet never lifted weights, I asked him yrs ago, and he said that he was always doing work on the farm, the repetitive lifting of heavy bags, machinery, guiding mules, etc, had helped. I also think genetics as well.

[snx]

Strength is strength. It is neither functional, nor unfunctional. It simply "is".

To your point, I wonder if you're arguing the more detailed issue of the ability to generate power, or force?

Force, or course, is a relationship between mass and acceleration.

Power is a relationship between energy used over a period of time.

To be "strong" means you can apply more force than one who is not. A strong man can more greatly accelerate the same mass as an unstrong man. This is greatly dependent on your ability achieve full activation of all fibers in a muscle group. Since contractions against near maximal resistance will almost certainly generate full activation of all fibers, activation is not the rate limiting step to force. The rate limiting step to force is the ability of each muscle fiber to contract and actually accelerate the mass. By being forceful, some men can accelerate loads others cannot because their muscle fibers are "powerful" enough to do so.

To be powerful means you can unleash stored energy in the muscles in a smaller period of time, than could a less powerful man. Or, similarly speaking you can unleash more energy in the same period of time. Well trained muscle fibers have superior energy/metabolic thresholds and adaptations that allow for more powerful muscle contractions (i.e. they produce more energy in the same time-frame as untrained muscle fibers). Each muscle fiber is more "energetically inclined".

We mistakenly confuse strength as functional or not. Rather, what we see as "functional" is the ability of a man to coordinate the power held in muscle fibers across varying muscle bodies, as opposed to the "unfunctional" man, who cannot coordinate this activity, and therefore be more forceful in certain planes. But being "functional" does not mean one inherently has muscle fibers that are more forceful or powerful. It is simply coordination. And coordination is a learned behavior practiced over the course of repetitive behavior.

To be functional requires repetition of a task. To be powerful or forceful does not require repetition of a specific task, per se, though it would certainly help.

The powerlifter is far more functional at the task of bench pressing than is the bodybuilder or the sprinter.

The sprinter is far more functional at the task of sprinting than is the bodybuilder or powerlifter.

The bodybuilder is far more functional at the task of doing rear delt raises (as you point out) than is the powerlifter or sprinter.

Because practice leads to functionality. Yet all three men may have the same ability to generate force in a muscle fiber, and have the same power output threshold. But the functionality of coordinating those force-generating powerful muscle fibers is the key. We qualitatively ascribe one man to be more "functional" than another, but those are our own personal prejudices at play in our belief that one activity is more functional than another. All activity is functional, if it accomplishes the task set before a man. It is unfunctional if it does not.

[The True Adonis]

Strength is strength. It is neither functional, nor unfunctional. It simply "is".

To your point, I wonder if you're arguing the more detailed issue of the ability to generate power, or force?

Force, or course, is a relationship between mass and acceleration.

Power is a relationship between energy used over a period of time.

To be "strong" means you can apply more force than one who is not. A strong man can more greatly accelerate the same mass as an unstrong man. This is greatly dependent on your ability achieve full activation of all fibers in a muscle group. Since contractions against near maximal resistance will almost certainly generate full activation of all fibers, activation is not the rate limiting step to force. The rate limiting step to force is the ability of each muscle fiber to contract and actually accelerate the mass. By being forceful, some men can accelerate loads others cannot because their muscle fibers are "powerful" enough to do so.

To be powerful means you can unleash stored energy in the muscles in a smaller period of time, than could a less powerful man. Or, similarly speaking you can unleash more energy in the same period of time. Well trained muscle fibers have superior energy/metabolic thresholds and adaptations that allow for more powerful muscle contractions (i.e. they produce more energy in the same time-frame as untrained muscle fibers). Each muscle fiber is more "energetically inclined".

We mistakenly confuse strength as functional or not. Rather, what we see as "functional" is the ability of a man to coordinate the power held in muscle fibers across varying muscle bodies, as opposed to the "unfunctional" man, who cannot coordinate this activity, and therefore be more forceful in certain planes. But being "functional" does not mean one inherently has muscle fibers that are more forceful or powerful. It is simply coordination. And coordination is a learned behavior practiced over the course of repetitive behavior.

To be functional requires repetition of a task. To be powerful or forceful does not require repetition of a specific task, per se, though it would certainly help.

The powerlifter is far more functional at the task of bench pressing than is the bodybuilder or the sprinter.

The sprinter is far more functional at the task of sprinting than is the bodybuilder or powerlifter.

The bodybuilder is far more functional at the task of doing rear delt raises (as you point out) than is the powerlifter or sprinter.

Because practice leads to functionality. Yet all three men may have the same ability to generate force in a muscle fiber, and have the same power output threshold. But the functionality of coordinating those force-generating powerful muscle fibers is the key. We qualitatively ascribe one man to be more "functional" than another, but those are our own personal prejudices at play in our belief that one activity is more functional than another. All activity is functional, if it accomplishes the task set before a man. It is unfunctional if it does not.

Fantastic post!
I`ll sum it up for you with your own sentence.

All activity is functional, if it accomplishes the task set before a man.

[MikMaq]

Bench press or pressing movements---like push ups, or pushing someone out of the way, pushing a plow, lawnmover, gates, even raking,  builds up the pecs. If you have ever raked a huge lawn, and haven't had your pecs sore after that, it's like one of the worse feelings.

My farther grew up on a farm, and I always wondered why he had big arms and shoulders, yet never lifted weights, I asked him yrs ago, and he said that he was always doing work on the farm, the repetitive lifting of heavy bags, machinery, guiding mules, etc, had helped. I also think genetics as well.

The assumption isn`t that people that lift have no functional strength. The point is different jobs are tuned to different ryhthm`s etc. You may be able to bench 10 reps, but if the action requires 1000 reps over a 3 hour period your not gonna have the same ability, compared to someone who is trained in that action. My father and most of my friends and family come from working hard labor jobs. And I got tons of friends that  work out and are completely useless with a shovel, or a axe etc.

It`s been called man  strength here before, but there is a biological and neurological basis for it.
If ones body is tuned for a certain type of action you will have more functional strength than if you were in a gym. It`s not just simply muscle fibers that make the difference, grip strength, body leverage(hip`s and shoulder), body fat, length of ones limbs, all play an important part in this stuff.

[Parker]

Thank you snx, I guess that is what I was really getting at. Strength is strength...
Neither functional nor unfunctional. So, some dude telling someone else about "functional strength" seemed odd to me (especially since he was shadow boxing, which means he was using energy to do something useless).
The rest of your post is spot on.

[MikMaq]

Fantastic post!
I`ll sum it up for you with your own sentence.

All activity is functional, if it accomplishes the task set before a man.

The base assumption is gym strength isn`t the same as old man strenght or strong like a farm boy. You can call it what you want they are very different things.

[The True Adonis]

The base assumption is gym strength isn`t the same as old man strenght or strong like a farm boy. You can call it what you want they are very different things.

Complete nonsense.

[MikMaq]

Complete nonsense.

This is semantics here isn`t it, functional strength from to most people i`ve met means working strength. As in it`ll work on the job, not gym strength which is constrained to the ten rep number. 

[snx]

This is semantics here isn`t it, functional strength from to most people i`ve met means working strength. As in it`ll work on the job, not gym strength which is constrained to the ten rep number. 

Well of course a farm-hand would be better and more functionally adept at threshing wheat...far more than Usain Bolt or Ronnie Coleman or Mark McGwire...he's been working the job, so he's got working strength.

Isn't Mark McGwire functional though? He's pretty good at hitting a baseball, which is his work that earns him money.

And isn't Ronnie Coleman functional at producing the strength necessary to succeed at his job, which is bodybuilding? I'd say so. He's far more functionally adept at bodybuilding than the farm-hand, or Mark McGwire, or Bolt.

I think we agree that this is semantics, and is guided by personal opinions...not the real scientific definition of power and force.

[MikMaq]

Well of course a farm-hand would be better and more functionally adept at threshing wheat...far more than Usain Bolt or Ronnie Coleman or Mark McGwire...he's been working the job, so he's got working strength.

Isn't Mark McGwire functional though? He's pretty good at hitting a baseball, which is his work that earns him money.

And isn't Ronnie Coleman functional at producing the strength necessary to succeed at his job, which is bodybuilding? I'd say so. He's far more functionally adept at bodybuilding than the farm-hand, or Mark McGwire, or Bolt.

I think we agree that this is semantics, and is guided by personal opinions...not the real scientific definition of power and force.

I`d agree, but I think functional strength is just the broscience word to separate power lifting numbers from on the job strength.


On a side note ronnie don`t lift heavy weights to be strong he does it to be large, as that is his function.

[flipper5470]

Then dude needs to go live on a farm and lift 100 lbs sack of potatoes all day...


You know, I thought of a sport that one could do. It's called the Plow Pull. Where you have a muddy "field" (the thicker the mud the better) have a plow, like the ones they used to have the oxen and workhorses pull. Have two  or more competitors pull said plow up and down the "field", like a race (55 m, 100m, etc).
The competitors can wear workboots or barefoot.

Said race would help develop quads (and stamina) or you'd see more competitors built like sprint cyclists, with big quads, or built like strongmen...

I did an event like this the past two years as a fundraiser for the good folks at the Special Olympics.  You put together men's and coed teams of 20 with the goal of pulling a 174,000 lb aircraft 12-15 feet.  It was a lot of fun and over thr course of those two years the participating teams have raised @ 100,000 dollars in donations.

[snx]

I`d agree, but I think functional strength is just the broscience word to separate power lifting numbers from on the job strength.


On a side note ronnie don`t lift heavy weights to be strong he does it to be large, as that is his function.

I agree.

[snx]

Fantastic post!
I`ll sum it up for you with your own sentence.

All activity is functional, if it accomplishes the task set before a man.

Thanks TA! You're not so unfunctional yourself!

[orion]

Two types of strength as I see it, rotational strength which is what you need for most sports, such as throwing a baseball or football, throwing a punch and linear which is what powerlifters and bodybuilders have.  All of it is functional, if you can deadlift 500lbs, believe me it will come in handy in everyday life.  

[The Scott]

Functional as in what can you do with it.  For the greater part, bodybuilders pose with what they have.  They can perform certain movements within the environment of a gym, but outside that they are pretty much useless.  Especially since they are too big to wipe their own butts.  This is where today's champs need the functionality of a schmoe.  Come to think of it, that is probably the Weider Schmoe Butt Wipe Principle in action.



Strongman competitors are perhaps the best example of what it means to be functionally strong.  They possess what is often called "real world strength" in that what they do in the gym and competition translates well for use in every day living when every day living requires  a degree of strength above normal.  Opening a jar of peanut butter or pulling a tire  out of the trunk of a car for example.   Throwing 50 to 100 pound sacks of wheat onto a truck would be another use of functional strength.

It's not as if bodybuilders are not strong, they are.  It's just that few (if any) people need to have their Smith Machine or curling machine used more often.
This is not to say that bodybuilders cannot do certain tasks that require strength, they can.  But they are probably too lazy or worried it will be detrimental to them in some way.  

[wild willie]

funtional strenght in other words means "i cant built muscle but im strong,man"


fuck strenght, most bbuilders dont give a shit about strenght after the initial maybe 2 motivational years where everyone is permabulker and cheats on every exercise.

with bodybuilding experience come the knowledge that strenght dont matter very much to build muscle.

Excellent post.....100 percent spot on! I agree with you!

[Parker]

I did an event like this the past two years as a fundraiser for the good folks at the Special Olympics.  You put together men's and coed teams of 20 with the goal of pulling a 174,000 lb aircraft 12-15 feet.  It was a lot of fun and over thr course of those two years the participating teams have raised @ 100,000 dollars in donations.

When I said two or more, I meant each competitor gets a plow...then "plows" a line as fast as he can down, racing the other competitor, 55m or 100. It can be up and down, and then stwirch off to a team-mate, think of it like swimmers do.

If you ever have seen when plows get stuck in the mud, it's hard to move them.