How do you choose principles for functional training programming?

1 What is functional training?

Functional training is a type of exercise that focuses on training your body to perform movements that are relevant to your daily life, sports, or occupation. Functional training aims to enhance your strength, mobility, stability, coordination, balance, power, and endurance by using multiple muscle groups and joints in various planes of motion. Functional training can also help you prevent or recover from injuries, improve your posture, and reduce your risk of chronic diseases.

2 What are the benefits of functional training?

Functional training can offer many benefits for your physical and mental health, such as improved performance in complex activities, increased functional strength and muscle mass, enhanced mobility and flexibility, boosted stability and balance, developed power and explosiveness, challenged cardiovascular and respiratory systems, stimulated brain and nervous system, and made workouts more fun. This type of training can help you maintain your metabolism, bone density, and body composition as you age, move better to prevent stiffness and reduce pain, avoid falls, injuries, and joint problems, react faster with more force to overcome resistance, improve your endurance, oxygen uptake, and heart health, as well as coordinate motor skills and cognitive function. Additionally, it can keep you motivated and consistent with your exercise.

3 How do you assess your functional fitness?

Before beginning a functional training program, it is important to assess your functional fitness level and identify your strengths and weaknesses. This can help you decide which exercises, intensity, and progression are suitable for your functional training programming. To assess your functional fitness, you can use various tests that measure mobility, stability, strength, power, endurance, and balance. Examples of these tests include the Functional Movement Screen (FMS), which evaluates movement quality and range of motion; the Senior Fitness Test (SFT), which measures aerobic capacity and upper and lower body strength; the Y Balance Test (YBT), which assesses dynamic balance and stability; the Vertical Jump Test (VJT), which gauges lower body power; and the 1.5 Mile Run Test (1.5MRT), which gauges aerobic endurance.

4 How do you choose exercises for functional training?

Functional training programming requires the selection of exercises that mimic or enhance daily life, sports, or occupation movements. For instance, a runner may include lunges, squats, hip hinges, or plyometrics to improve running mechanics. A firefighter may include exercises that simulate job tasks like carrying, dragging, climbing, or crawling. When choosing exercises for functional training, some criteria to consider include the movement pattern (e.g., push, pull, squat, hinge, lunge, rotate and carry; and planes of motion such as sagittal, frontal and transverse), the muscle group (e.g., compound exercises for multiple muscle groups and joints; and core muscles activation with planks, bridges or dead bugs), the equipment (e.g., dumbbells, kettlebells, resistance bands, medicine balls or TRX; and body weight exercises like push-ups, pull-ups or burpees) and the variation (e.g., regression, progression or modification; and load, volume and frequency with periodization or undulation).

5 How do you structure your functional training program?

Structuring your functional training program according to your goals, needs, and abilities is an important principle. To design your program, you should define a specific and measurable goal, such as improving performance or health, and identify your needs based on assessment results. Additionally, consider your fitness level, experience, and skill when adjusting your ability based on feedback. To determine frequency, intensity, time, and type of exercises for your program, use the FITT principle. For example, if your goal is to improve endurance, you may want to do functional training exercises three times a week at a moderate to high intensity for 30 to 60 minutes per session using a circuit or interval format.

6 How do you progress your functional training program?

The final principle for functional training programming is to progress your program to avoid plateaus, boredom, and injuries. You should monitor your progress by testing, tracking, or rating and modify your progress by using overload, specificity, or variation strategies. To progress your functional training program, you can increase the difficulty of exercises by increasing the load, volume, intensity, or complexity. You can also improve the relevance of exercises by matching them to your goal, need, or ability. Additionally, you can change the stimulus of exercises by altering the frequency, time, type, or order. For example, you can use heavier weights, more sets or reps, faster or longer intervals, more advanced movements, exercises that simulate your sport or activity, target your weak or injured areas, different equipment, durations, formats, or sequences.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?