They’re a great way to get bigger stronger biceps. Bicep curls are not a waste of time, of course they’re not. And I know that there are still people out there who believe the same thing.

Because he was in a position of influence, a lot of people listened to him, and I’m embarrassed to admit that I believed this and said the same thing for a few years. His argument was that you never do elbow flexion in isolation so it’s a non-functional movement. Here’s a personally relevant anecdote: When I was in school, the coach/instructor who taught the strength training course liked to talk about how bicep curls were a waste of time because they weren’t functional. The main problem with this period of time was many coaches moving away from tried and true tools like barbells, all in the name of “functional training.”Īnd that’s more or less how we got to where we are today where we’re not even really sure what functional training means, much less if it’s a good or bad thing. Some of things to come out of this era have merit, but some were downright silly. So, we started seeing things like the bosu ball, squatting on stability balls and lots of work with bands. And things also got oddly obsessed with balance. Coaches started trying to make training look like sport to help improve transfer from the weight room to the field of play. Functional Training is BornĪnd from here was born the idea of sport specificity and making workouts more “functional. Unsurprisingly, there’s not much carry over. For example, the relationship between a seated knee extension and vertical jump.

Athletes added muscle, got stronger, and may or may not have seen reduced injury rates (this is almost impossible to prove either way).Īt the same time, we started doing research looking at the relationship between bodybuilding style exercises and athletic qualities, and didn’t see much of an association. For the most part, athletes during this era followed bodybuilding style routines.

In the 1970s and 80s it become more common and accepted for athletes to lift. Weightlifting, or working out, was essentially synonymous with bodybuilding. Team sport athletes like basketball players and hockey players didn’t lift weights at this time. Remember, powerlifting was not popular yet. Because that’s what was popular, that is what was recognized as the correct way to train. What are some of the core principles of body building? You’re trying to make muscles grow, training programs are organized around body parts, and there’s a lot of isolation work. Strength training and weightlifting date back to ancient times, but in terms of it being a part of popular culture and the idea that a regular person should lift weights, that really started in the 1950s and 60s with a rise in the popularity of bodybuilding. If we’re going to have a discussion about functional training, we need to quickly go over the history of strength training or weightlifting in North America. History of Training and Functional Training Here’s my Youtube video on the same subject if you would rather watch than read: Like so many things in the fitness and training world, if we can get on the same page about some definitions and what we’re actually talking about, we can probably find common ground about how useful or effective functional training really is. Then you have other coaches who say that functional training is a waste of time. Some coaches say that everything has to be functional and that any isolation exercises are a waste of time. This is a fun, and surprisingly polarizing topic. Specifically, what is it, and is it important, or is it a waste of time?

Today’s article is about functional training.

Functional training