The Death of ‘Functional’ Fitness
Takeaway Points:
The trend of ‘functional’ fitness aims to train exercisers with movements that are supposedly more likely to carry over to practical everyday uses.
However, in doing so, many ‘functional’ recommendations contradict long-standing, well-researched and evidence-based practices in fitness, to the detriment of their followers.
Unfortunately, there is something that functional fitness is uniquely good at - gathering attention on social media via highly viral, unusual movements likely to attract
This post is an updated version of a much older article, originally published on 3/11/13. It has been reworked for readability and edited for current article standards.
There has been a recent trend towards the concept of “functional” fitness - what does that even mean?
When the word functional was used in my training manual, it was essentially used as a synonym for 'corrective exercise', another big buzzword in the industry today. The goal of corrective exercise (and functional exercise, in this sense) is to correct postural deviations caused by muscular imbalances through a combination of strengthening and stretching. As I was taught, functional exercise is anything that therefore involves the restoration of function in relation to these imbalances, by restoring posture/gait mechanisms and thus improving the client's capacity for basic movement and everyday activity.
While this makes some sense, the problem is that the word 'functional' has been used and abused for so many other purposes that it’s lost all meaning. That loss of meaning, in turn, means that the word can be used for all sorts of different and ultimately contradictory purposes. 'Functional' becomes the criticism of choice for contrarians looking to put down athletes in sports that they don’t like. Having a lot of muscle mass is no longer “functional” because the critic in question doesn’t like bodybuilding. Being incredibly strong and having a 1000lb squat isn’t “functional” because the critic in question doesn’t like powerlifting.
The point is that 'functional' ends up used from the perspective of literally anyone not interested in your particular sport to downplay your achievements. Feats of strength, endurance, speed, and agility are all downplayed in favor of whatever exercise regimen the 'functional' warrior prefers, which often includes hefty amounts of bodyweight exercises or goofy generalized fitness routines not geared for performance. Traditional functional training also includes a lot of core movements, rotational elements, single arm/leg exercises, and unusual methods for loading - band and cable resistance a lot over traditional dumbbells and barbells, unstable surfaces, and heavy use of fancy new training implements. These routines are rarely good for very much, but they make for flashy, showy, and attention-grabbing social media bytes, which makes them ideal for attracting an internet following.
Often, the criticism that functional training proponents are making, is that existing exercise methods tend to be incomplete. They may create muscular imbalances or bad movement patterns, or create adaptations that need to be offset with other kinds of training. The functional training proponent advocates for an effective, well-rounded training program that is supposedly healthier, and better at producing performance overall.
The problem is that the point of any exercise is completely context-dependent. Different exercisers can train the exact same movement in very different ways, for very different purposes. Let’s take the squat, for example. A bodybuilder trains the squat with high repetitions, moderate weights, and extreme ranges of motion to stimulate more muscle growth. A powerlifter trains the squat with low repetitions, heavy weights, and only the competition-required depth in order to maximize strength. A general health and wellness exerciser may squat with lower weights and higher repetitions in order to work around a pre-existing injury. A marathon athlete may squat with low/moderate weight and reps in order to get the strength and injury-prevention benefits of lifting weights in support of their primary athletic goals, without being too fatiguing in a way that could take away from their endurance training. All of these are completely valid ways to train, that support different training goals.
And they want different things out of their activity. They are optimizing for different adaptations, difficulty levels, and of course levels of commitment. This also, of course, means that there will be different strengths and weaknesses to each approach.
Strengthening some adaptations, naturally means that you’re going to see other adaptations that are not as well addressed, because they are not as beneficial for your goals. The endurance athlete does not benefit from training like a powerlifter, and vice versa, because there is a limited amount of energy which can be spent on training and adaptation, and you want to optimize for the qualities that you care about.
Functional proponents often are guilty of context collapse - combining all contexts into one, presenting a supposed “optimal”, “universal” training method which is best for everyone, or can be incorporated into existing programs to make you magically resistant to injury. In this way, they can criticize non-adherents for not being “functional”, even though their methods are likely objectively worse for many specific athletic goals.
Another common argument from functional exercise proponents is that their training methods (often involving unstable surfaces, a high emphasis on core training, and training in non-standard movement patterns) have better carryover to real life. They’re more “functional” because these movements train your body in ways that will actually benefit you, unlike getting bigger or stronger, or what have you.
This is just not true, and there’s plenty of research by now to prove it. Instability exercises are often inferior for developing desirable adaptations. Building muscle, strength, and endurance IS functional, because these are the qualities that make your body better capable of managing the demands of everyday life, even if it means training with movement patterns that are not precisely identical to the ones that you’ll be using. A squat doesn’t have to be exactly the way your legs are worked in real life, for it to be used to build strength and muscle in your legs to be beneficial.
An exercise is “functional” only if it's relevant to whatever goals the exerciser has in mind. This means that “functional” is highly context-dependent. You can describe an exercise as “functional” with relation to a specific sport or training goal, but you can’t really use it as a general critical term.
The point that's probably most infuriating about the “everyday life” version of the functional argument is that there is literally no situation in which any exercise is directly “functional” with relation to everyday life. If you're seriously exercising for any reason, you're going beyond the basic requirements of physical life. Chances are that if you live in a developed country with access to modern technology and social systems, you could go your entire life without exercising or having to ever lift a heavy weight, and obviously quite a lot of people do. The whole point of exercise is that it’s not like ordinary life - it’s harder, and you use this to develop desired adaptations which will be generally beneficial outside the gym, or in order to perform in a specific sport.
In general, I think that the push for functional fitness is often a misguided one - not in intent, but in practice. Yes, it’s probably smarter for athletes to be more well-rounded, for the sake of their long term health - but this needs to be done via the tried-and-true, well-researched and tested methods which have worked forever, and not constantly inventing fancy, gimmicky new movements that are imagined to solve perceived flaws in existing movements.
About Adam Fisher
Adam is an experienced fitness coach and blogger who's been blogging and coaching since 2012, and lifting since 2006. He's written for numerous major health publications, including Personal Trainer Development Center, T-Nation, Bodybuilding.com, Fitocracy, and Juggernaut Training Systems.
During that time he has coached thousands of individuals of all levels of fitness, including competitive powerlifters and older exercisers regaining the strength to walk up a flight of stairs. His own training revolves around bodybuilding and powerlifting, in which he’s competed.
Adam writes about fitness, health, science, philosophy, personal finance, self-improvement, productivity, the good life, and everything else that interests him. When he's not writing or lifting, he's usually hanging out with his cats or feeding his video game addiction.
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