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Functional Training for Those who are New to Strength Training

Functional Training is taking the strength and conditioning world by storm for three very important reasons. First of all, it’s fun. If you have never dragged a sled or flipped a tire, you don’t know what you are missing. It may sound kind of silly, but the first time you get under a tire, drive your hips forward and heave it over you’ll know that you’ve found something that you’ll want to do again and again.

Functional Training involves mainly weight bearing activities targeted at the core, which comprises basically the abs and lower back muscles.  These muscle improvements are then applied to the movements necessary for your specific sport.  Even if you’re not training for any sport in particular, you’ll find yourself performing everyday tasks with greater ease and balance and stamina.

Next, there is less muscle soreness in the days following a functional workout vs. a traditional strength training workout using barbells, dumbbells and bands. The reason for this is that there is little or no eccentric contraction in most functional movements. The eccentric phase is the lengthening phase of a muscle during movement.  For instance while performing a squat, the movement stretches the muscle from the top to the bottom. This tends to be the phase that causes the most damage and subsequent pain. With functional movements, this phase is eliminated. For example, when dragging a sled, the load stays still. No matter how much weight you put on the sled, it is never going to pull you backwards.  The same applies to tire flipping, sledgehammer swings and battle ropes – basically you are breaking inertia (the absence of movement) and that is it.

Finally, functional training gets you results that are useful in your sport. Traditional barbell(bb) and dumbbell (db) work make an athlete stronger, which can then be used in their sport.  However, there isn’t a direct relationship between BB strength and skating.  For example, Performing a dead lift, will make a skater much stronger but the strength gained needs to be assimilated  in order for it to be put to use. Functional movements, however, more closely resemble the movements one performs during athletic skating competition. Sled drag crossovers, for example, will increase the strength of the muscles responsible for the crossover movement in skating which will help to increase the power of this movement in a skating twirl. Another great example to increase power is  by using Russian Boxes; i.e. two 35-degree ramps that slope toward each other. The action of jumping off of the outside leg from one box to the other is very similar to the skating motion. This functional movement is excellent for improving one’s skating power.

Given these facts, I recommend functional training for everyone – from the young athlete to the older adult who is looking to keep their mobility into their later years, and everyone in between. In fact, I believe that functional training is particularly useful for those wanna-be athletes who have never done any formal strength training because they already have some experience with the movements. Most sports have the athletes run, twist and jump and these are all facets of functional training – the learning curve for functional training is much shorter making these types of workouts produce success very quickly.

When functional workouts are paired with proper nutrition the results are fantastic! Body composition will improve dramatically as decreases in body fat are coupled with increases in lean body mass. On-field or on-ice performance will also improve dramatically as stronger, leaner athletes are able to produce more relative force – this translates into harder hitting, higher jumping, and faster running or skating. Proper nutrition will fuel the body correctly, meaning it can function optimally with higher sustained energy, higher force generation and quicker recovery from intense efforts.

If you are a developing athlete or the parent of a developing athlete and are looking at getting involved in strength training I highly recommend the 8 or 12 week High Performance Training camp. This camp consists of workouts Monday to Friday.  You will receive complete nutritional guidance throughout the entire program. Not only will you develop strength that will help you perform better in the coming season, you will learn the proper way to eat to help achieve your full potential.

The camp fills up quickly. Space is limited, so get in touch with us to start preparing for your best season ever! All SST centres run Functional training camps. Check us out at www.SSTCanada.com

Larry Jusdanis

Owner, Sports Specific Training

Sstcanada.com

Director of the National Association of Speed and Explosion (NASE)

Larry Jusdanis is the owner of Sports Specific Training Inc.  SST has trained thousands of athletes from a variety of sports. SST’s no nonsense approach to training has been used by thousands of athletes’ from a variety of sports all over the nation!

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