The Problem With Functional Exercise

Exercises are vehicles of stress/load application. The key for us is understanding the behaviour of the anatomy as you apply that stress/load.

 

What’s your intention?

1. Are you trying to apply stress to the anatomy in a manner that mimics the real-like tasks that we characterise as “functional?”
2. Or, are you trying to apply stress to the anatomy in a manner that builds physical capacities that the nervous system can engage with under appropriate conditions to support task-specific behaviour?

For us, describing an exercise as “functional” is similar to describing an exercise as a “stability” exercise. Its meaning is blurred, and there are clearer ways to organise how stress/load is being applied to the system from a training & rehab standpoint. Especially if the goal is to apply continual stimulation / progressively load the movement system to build adaptable qualities.

What does “functional” exercise even mean?

How people describe the term functional differs depending on who you talk to, and that’s one of the main reasons we need to question its usefulness.

But, generally, people will describe functional exercises as exercises that mimic the positions/postures we express during the tasks that we engage in during everyday life and/or sporting activities. E.g., we squat down to pick up our kids and stand back up, so this is functional right? This means we NEED to train squats!! 

However, this is messy reasoning. Squatting to pick up your kids is a movement used to accomplish a task. Squatting in a clinic/gym setting IS THE TASK! They are not the same and have different goals. Also, the movements/positions/postures that we express during everyday life & sports emerge as the result of interactions between the individual, the task, and the environment. So, it becomes a much more complex process to mimic these movements/positions/postures when we consider all the other factors that play a role in their emergence. More on this below.

This reasoning gets even messier when a client has a problem/concern relating to the task of squatting to pick up their kids. 

For the sake of simplicity, let’s say this client struggled to ascend from the squat position because of perceived weakness & knee pain. Let’s also say that you determined that a key contributing factor was a lack of strength in the quadriceps, secondary to a meniscus repair 3 years ago that wasn’t rehabbed appropriately.

What do you do? Do you keep it “functional” and just overload the squat to load/stress the quads (that is of course an option)?

Do you assess for “dysfunction” in their squat and try to “fix” the squat to make it look more “functional?”

Or, do we select strategies that help us concentrate load/stress into the quads in a step by step manner to build their capacity to handle forces? 

There’s nothing wrong with squats. But, the problem with just doing squats, is that squats come in many different flavours, and there’s many cheats that a client can use to steer stress away from the quad. 

Using strategies to concentrate load/stress into the quads may be seen as less “functional,” but they may be exactly what the client needs to support the completion of the squatting task.

What are some other common characteristics of “functional” exercises?

Just to be clear, there’s nothing inherently wrong with functional exercises, but as health & rehab professionals, we have to question whether this description is enough to help us organise our exercises and appropriately load individuals to build capacities. 

Here’s a list of some other characteristics that people often use to describe functional exercises:

1. Exercises that reflect “movements, not muscles.” 
2. Integrating multiples planes of motion into the same exercise vs fewer planes of motion 
3. Integrating multiple joints into the same exercise vs concentrating motion at a single joint 
4. Integrating multiple muscles into the same exercise vs concentrating load into few muscles 

Again, there’s nothing wrong with any of these characteristics. The problem is when we are simply asking a client to perform an exercise because it’s more functional, instead of actually assessing the current capacities of an individual and organising our exercises around building those capacities. 

Movement is the result of interactions

Another problem with asking clients to perform exercises simply because they are more functional, is because it doesn’t represent how movement emerges in the real world.

Movement emerges as a result of the interactions. Interactions between the nervous system & the anatomy. 

But, also the interaction between the individual, the task, and the environment. 

You can’t simulate that in a clinic or gym, and we have to ask ourselves as rehab professionals, is that a key goal (to simulate real-life tasks)? 

Or do we want to build available capacities that the brain can engage with?

For us, building capacities is key to address first before splitting exercises into functional & non-functional categories. 

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get fancy and spice things up. This also doesn’t mean you don’t squat. By all means add some fancy stuff if your client is bored of the fundamentals, but do it alongside strategies that allow for a more targeted delivery of stress/load into the appropriate tissues, as well as allowing for clearer pathways for progressions & regressions. 

Also, have a conversation with the client about the difference between these two strategies to make a shared decision. 

Bottom line

Describing an exercise as functional isn’t very helpful to guide a clear organisation of exercise (stress/load application). Especially if your description of functional isn’t related to the clients goals, the meaningful tasks that they are having difficulty with, or their current capacities that you would have hopefully identified during the assessment.