What is Functional Strength Training? Popular Myths Debunked

For reasons I have yet to fully understand, it has come to pass that certain types of exercise or pieces of equipment are now classed as “functional” while others are not.

According to a leaflet that was thrust into my hot little hands the other day, a new gym that’s just opened in my area contains a “functional training zone” with Kettlebells, Power Plates and TRX Suspension Trainers.

Precisely why an exercise done with a barbell or a dumbbell is less functional than one performed with a kettlebell, a suspension trainer or on a platform that vibrates is still something of a mystery to me.

“Functional training” ranks alongside “the core” as one of the most loathsome terms in all of fitness.

It leads people to believe that all other forms of exercise are “non-functional” and therefore less effective than something with “functional” written in front of it.

Read a few articles on the subject, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that anything tagged with the functional training label delivers a host of unique benefits that are beyond the reach of those employing any other training method.

Your friends will barely be able to conceal their amazement at the dramatic transformation in your sporting performance.

Top Hollywood producers will immediately offer you a multi-million pound deal to do all the stunts in the next Mission Impossible film.

Chris Hemsworth will be on the phone demanding to know why he’s been kicked off the cover of Men’s Health magazine and replaced by a shirtless picture of you.

What Is Functional Strength Training?

Everyone has a slightly different definition of what functional strength training actually is.

Although large numbers of people have spent many highly productive hours on the Internet arguing about this very subject, they have yet to come up with a definitive answer.

Some will tell you that it’s all about training with sandbags, medicine balls, waterballs or other “odd shaped” objects. For others, the term “functional” is synonymous with the use of an unstable surface such as a Bosu ball or a wobble board.

The American Council on Exercise (ACE) defines functional strength training as “performing work against resistance in such a manner that the improvements in strength directly enhance the performance of movements so that an individual’s activities of daily living are easier to perform.”

Wikipedia defines functional training as a “classification of exercise which involves training the body for the activities performed in everyday life.”

What do most people do in their everyday lives?

They get out of bed, walk around a bit, sit down, stand up, maybe do a bit more walking, then get back into bed again. Perhaps there’s a bit of bending, twisting, turning, pushing and pulling in there too.

Is that the sort of activity that requires training? In most cases, no it isn’t.

If an activity is something you’re able to do as part of your everyday life, you don’t really need to train for it.

If you’ve got an Apple Watch, and you like to log your workouts on there, you’ve probably noticed that functional strength training and traditional strength training appear separately on the list of activities.

What’s the difference between the two?

According to Apple, you should choose functional strength training when performing dynamic strength sequences for the upper body, lower body, or full body, using small equipment like dumbbells, resistance bands, and medicine balls or with no equipment at all.

However, this is not a particularly helpful definiton.

What exactly is a dynamic strength sequence? What if said dynamic strength sequence were performed with a barbell rather than a dumbbell?

Does a pull-up count as functional strength training, while a lat pulldown doesn’t? Does a dumbbell bench press count as functional but the same exercise performed with a barbell doesn’t?

If I do a set of bench presses using a barbell, it uses the muscles in my upper body, it’s dynamic (i.e. movement is involved), it requires strength endurance (i.e. the ability to repeatedly exert force against external resistance) and it’s done in a sequence (i.e. one repetition follows another).

In other words, the barbell bench press certainly meets the criteria as a dynamic strength sequence for the upper body.

Over a period of months and years, my body is going to adapt to the barbell bench press in a very similar way to the dumbbell bench press.

It doesn’t make a lot of sense to welcome the dumbbell version of the exercise into the functional basket, while the same exercise performed with a barbell is left out in the cold.

Functional Strength Training Exercises

Fans of functional strength training will often dismiss certain exercises on the basis they’re “non-functional” and therefore irrelevant to everyday activities.

The bench press is one such example.

“The bench press is a useless measure of strength and has no real-world application,” say the critics. “Other than powerlifting, there is no sport or daily activity that requires you to lie on your back and push a bar off your chest.”

To the critics, I say this.

Done correctly, the bench press is one of the best ways to build upper body strength and power. Both are physical qualities that are important for competitive athletes in a number of different sports.

The positive transfer of strength from one activity to another doesn’t require them to be exactly the same. Yes, the extent to which strength can be carried over from one activity to another will depend on how closely they resemble one another. But they certainly don’t need to be identical.

The leg press is another example of an exercise that the functional strength training brigade would rather you didn’t do.

Here’s an extract from an article on the subject:

“Train your muscles the way you actually use them—and build what’s called functional strength. For example, in real life you use your quads in coordination with your hamstrings, glutes and core to pick up kids, climb stairs, and load Ikea furniture in the car. So skip the leg press and do squats and lunges instead.”

Labeling an exercise functional or non-functional ignores the fact that functionality is not determined by a small number of inputs, such as the use of a specific exercise, movement pattern or piece of equipment, but by output.

And by output, I’m talking about a positive change in whatever physical quality – strength in this case – that you’re trying to improve.

This will come, not from the exclusion or inclusion of a single exercise, movement pattern or training modality, but from a strength and conditioning program that incorporates many different exercises.

The term functional strength training is a redundant one. That’s because traditional strength training in and of itself is functional.

If you can’t climb the stairs, pick up your kids or load Ikea furniture into your car, then you have a problem.

It’s a problem that’s quite easily solved by getting stronger.

And there’s no good reason why the leg press can’t form part of a workout routine designed to make you stronger.

Why Weight Machines Build Functional Strength

It’s not just the leg press. Weight machines in general come in for a lot of flak these days, partly on the basis that “they don’t build functional strength or transfer to real-life activities.”

However, this isn’t an argument that stands up to scrutiny. In fact, machine-based training programs have been shown in a number of studies to enhance athletic performance.

In one trial, researchers put two groups of elite cyclists from the Danish Under-23 national team through a 16-week training program [1].

The first group did 10-18 hours of cycling each week. Group two did the same thing, but added two to three days of traditional strength training.

What did that traditional strength training program look like?

This was purely a machine-based routine, comprising the leg extension, leg press, leg curl, and calf raise.

In other words, there were no squats. No deadlifts. No Bosu balls. No Backward Rotational to Forward Cross Lunges.

Yet this renegade bunch of “non-functional exercises” delivered an impressive 8% improvement in time-trial performance. That’s more than twice the improvement seen in the cycling-only group.

There’s more.

In a 2017 study, Spanish researchers trained a group of professional handball players with two different types of leg press: the conventional 45-degree leg press and one that uses a flywheel [2].

The result?

After training three times a week for six weeks, men in both groups were stronger and more powerful. They could run faster and jump higher.

In addition, training programs based partially or entirely on machine-based exercises have been shown to work better than corticosteroid injections for improving knee pain and function in people with jumper’s knee [3].

They’ve also proven very effective at reducing knee pain in competitive volleyball and basketball players suffering from the same problem [4].

What if you want an exercise that more closely mimics a sporting action?

Jason Ferruggia has been thinking deeply about this subject for some time, and may have stumbled upon the answer:

“Take for example, a football lineman. He never presses while lying on his back, he only presses forward to block his opponent while on his feet.”

“What he needs is an exercise that starts with him coming out of a three point stance, exploding upward and then explosively pushing forward while contracting his abs, lower back and just about every other muscle in his body.”

“Hmm… how can we come up with an exercise that does all of that?”

“Oh I got it! It’s called football practice!”

Final Thoughts

“For the majority of the population, simply getting stronger, regardless of the exercise used, will enhance their functional capacity,” says Dr Brad Schoenfeld.

“Ultimately, some exercises have greater applicability than others based on individual goals and abilities, but most people can improve their functional capacity substantially by using a wide array of training approaches, and a standard bodybuilding-style program will fill the bill.”

Functional training is nothing more than making sure there is a match between your goals and the training you’re doing.

If your training program moves you closer to those goals, then it’s functional.

If it doesn’t then it isn’t.