Athletes and individuals that are healthy tend to focus on strength, flexibility, or cardiovascular fitness, but athletic prowess is not just limited to strength, flexibility, or cardiovascular fitness. Functional training focuses on agility, balance, and coordination. By focusing on stereotypical movement patterns, training overlaps clinical rehabilitation, namely pushing, pulling, squats, and lunges. These are the movements athletes use in all sports as opposed to isolated movements of specific joints. Isolation is not the primary goal of the athlete, but may be the motivation for a bodybuilder to increase muscle mass. Isolated movements trained repetitively do not transfer any benefit to tasks that are functional.
Efficient motor control enhances sport performance along with preventing injury. Movement literacy can become compromised in situations of adaptations to pain or poor postural habits. Think of functional training as a method to update the software of your motor control program. Repetitive movements become ingrained in the central nervous system, and it is through appropriate training that this program is ingrained. Body building may change the hardware through isolated movements, but it does not update the software through plastic changes within the brain. Identifying faulty movement patterns is just one aspect of functional performance.
Correcting joint, muscle, or fascial dysfunction first, followed by functional training, is a common practice that increases the chances of a successful outcome. The more similarity between the exercise and the actual activity, the greater the likelihood that functional improvements transfer to home, sport, or work activities.
