Functional Strength Training

Zero workouts for me today.

The primary goal of any strength training program for an endurance athlete should be injury reduction. Notice, I did not say injury prevention. Again, just to recap yesterday's blog, if you are using strength training as a part of injury rehabilitation, make sure you are following a program prescribed by your doctor or PT.

What is functional strength training? Functional strength training works to enhance the coordinated working relationship between the nervous and muscular systems. Obviously, having a good working relationship between our nervous and muscular systems will help us to perform our sport of choice better. But how will this help to reduce injuries? There should be five key aspects of every strength training program: 1. develop joint flexibility, 2. develop tendon strength, 3. develop core strength, 4. develop stabilizing muscles, 5. train movements not muscles. It just so happens that functional strength training is the best way to cover these five items. As we look at the five aspects of strength training, we notice that they all also seem to relate to injury reduction. Especially key to injury reduction is developing stabilizing muscles. Functional strength training is a great way to do this.

When designing a functional strength training program, you want to make sure you include controlled amounts of instability so that you must react in order to regain your stability. For example, one great functional stability exercise is the one legged squat. You'll have to concentrate on maintaining your balance while you do this exercise. See the nervous system and muscular system working together? No weights required for this type of training, which also makes it easy to do at home. The next progression on this exercise would be to perform a one legged squat on an Airex mat then on a Bosu ball after that. Now when doing functional strength exercises it is Key to note that we are training the movement, not the muscles! Therefore, we won't necessarily do repetitions of these exercises, but will do them until we achieve "functional mastery." What does that mean? It means that you do it until you can do it perfectly. If you can't get it perfect during one session, then you pick up at that same point during the next session. Taking our one legged squat as an example, you would continue to do the one legged squat on the ground until you could get it perfect, meaning no wobbling, falling over, etc. Once you achieve functional mastery, then you would progress to the one legged squat on the Airex mat and do that until you achieve functional mastery.

Bottom line - If you're looking to incorporate some strength training into your training plan, functional strength training gives you the most bang for your buck!