Ok, so as I said last week, I’ve entered into the Manchester Spartan sprint, with a target of completing the five kilometre long assault course in two and a half hours.
As I have a full time job, with a heavy workload, fitting training in isn’t always easy, which means every gym session has to have maximum effect, which is where the idea of ‘functional training’ comes into play.
When I first began visiting the gym the first thing I was told was to ignore any exercise in which the direction of your movement is completely controlled. In other words, avoid isolated exercises, and while I generally agree with this statement, isolated exercises are not bad, they don’t harm your development and they certainly shouldn’t be ignored, they just don’t fit into my style or meet my needs. The reason behind this logic is that isolated exercises are exactly that, isolated. They get muscles used to working alone, which may not be such a bad thing but think of it like this; if a football team trained players completely on their own, separate from the rest of their team, then you get a crap team of fantastic players. They have no idea how to use each other, or how to properly support one another. Functional training goes in the opposite direction, getting your muscles used to working together, getting stronger and leaner. Functional workouts are never going to get you massive or ‘ripped’ (never liked the term ripped) but they are going to build you into the metaphorical machine everyone desires to be.
The idea of functional exercise was first introduced to me at university. I trained kickboxing, jujitsu and Pilipino boxing during second and third year, and was focused on being bigger than my opponents. I had the theory that being bigger (and therefore stronger) than anyone who I fought against was the best course of action. I was of course wrong. I was coming up against guys half my size and being outmatched by them. That’s when my trainer first mentioned functional training. Apparently in ancient Rome they would get gladiators building roads and other structures. She said this got their bodies used to actually working, and not just looking impressive. And while not necessarily true (gladiators were far too expensive to risk injury doing manual labour, but most were slaves bought from said industries) the theory behind it rang true for me, so I changed up my training routine, and suddenly I was able to go further and faster than before. I lost a bit of size and some definition, but that wasn’t as important to me as I was now better than before despite being smaller.
“so alright buddy, I suppose you’re going to say I need to go on some fancy diet now, buy lots of powders and a whole lot of other expensive shit” I hear you, and some people will probably tell you that a key component in your quest for physical success is all those expensive powders, but I'm not going to. Basically, cut out the fat, cut out the sugar and then go to town. For me personally, I think the slimming world diet works great. It’s a great way of balancing your fruits, veggies, proteins, along with any of those treats you can’t resist. But I'm not going to try to sell you on the idea, that’s what works for me, but I hope I’ve sparked your interest with the rest of what I’ve said, enough to come back next week that is.
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