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By: Jon Hinds, CSCS, former NBA Strength Coach and NFL and MLB strength advisor, Owner & Founder of the Monkey Bar Gymnasium
Functional Exercise has been a catch phrase for the fitness industry for the last 20 years. What truly is functinonal exercise? Is functional exercise isolation exercises on balance equipment or doing full body movements on a machine? I believe functional exercise is neither. Doing anything in isolation is totally un-natural, no animal moves in isolation in the wild or domestic, it doesn’t make a difference even if it is on a stability ball or a foam pad, we just don’t move like that in natural settings. The same holds true for doing full body exercise on a machine. I believe as long as your isolating, in a fixed balanced environment and your real life reactions are taken out of the picture, the exercise has lost the ability to be coined “Functional Exercise”.
Functional Exercise is whole body exercise(s) that benefit your motor fitness. Motor fitness refers to how you perform simple and basic movements. Training with Functional Exercise will improve your kinesthetic sense (your bodies ability to right or stabilize itself) and improve your motor skills, so you’ll do all the basics better.“Motor fitness includes balance, flexibility, agility, strength, power and endurance all dominated by the kinesthetic senses. The more this kinesthetic sense is developed, the better your motor skills and fitness will be. You’ll also be much less likely to incur injuries”. (Physical Fitness & Dynamic Health, Thomas K. Cureton Jr., 1965).
Thomas Curetons book written in 1965 is 100% Functional Exercise. This book was one of my many study companions on my path to gaining knowledge on functional exercise. It is really simple, there are no stability balls or boards, but lots of simple full body Functional Exercise all with the simple goal of improving ones Motor Fitness. This book only gave me more confidence in opening my Monkey Bar Gymnasium in January 2001, which is still the only No Machine, No Mirror Gym in the country that trains 100% full body Functional Exercise.
The benefits of Functional Exercise are off the charts with results far exceeding expectations in Motor Fitness AND Appearance gains! We like to look at our Functional Exercise as skill training…”Fitness for the Urban Jungle”!!
Just look at the “Average” Motor Fitness changes at my Monkey Bar Gymnasium:
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Exercise:
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When Beginning
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After 2-3 Months:
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Push ups
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4 knee push ups
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handstand walking
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Chin ups
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8 assisted chin ups
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climbing poles
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Full Squats
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18 in 45 seconds
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35 in 45 seconds
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Jumping Rope
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300 reps in 5:30
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300 reps in 2:45
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Pains
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Back Pain – Chronic
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Back Pain – non existing
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Now with these types of incredible improvements in levels of Functional Exercise, some might think the ‘appearance’ changes might not be so great. On the contrary, our students also “AVERAGE”, I repeat ‘AVERAGE’, 17 lbs of fat loss and 5 lbs of muscle gain in their first 60 days at the Monkey Bar Gymnasium. That is a 22 lb positive change in their first 60 days of training using only 110% Functional Exercise. And what Professor Cureton mentioned about improving kinesthetic sense is true as we are also proving.
By training with Functional Exercise in a preventative and rehabilitative manner, we have been able to heal most all common pains our members and students have. As I always say “ The proof is in the pudding” Functional Exercise works!
Here’s another interesting point to consider on Functional Exercise and Isolated Non Functional Exercise; In order to do any Functional Exercise you have to be conscious of what your doing, involved, etc… The opposite is true for Non Functional Exercise (isolation) where a lot of the time you can be totally unaware. People all over the world who do Non Functional Exercise have a common concern…how they look…Fashion over Function. They do their 45-60 minutes of exercise while watching TV on a computer screen with the main reason being to cut weight and to look better.
I understand wanting to look better, feeling better comes with it too. This is never a good path as your always judging how you look. Functional Exercise is skill training, your goals are very positive and attainable, you will improve your conditioning and performance dramatically as you run faster, jump higher, heal pains, play in games of sport and life!! Functional Exercise is the best of both worlds, skill training (improves motor fitness) AND improved Appearance as well (fat loss, calorie burning, getting leaner). Functional exercise is the only way to go!
“It is health that is the real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.”
––Gandhi
 My 3 Steps to Improving Functional Exercise:
1. Align the body for all movement: before doing any full body exercise, we first use active “Alignment” positions (from our Eischens Yoga) that improve alignment and result in improve movement, rehab of injuries and prevent injuries.
2. Train the Basics and teach your body how to correctly jump, run, push, pull, react, throw, catch, and do all types of activities and you will be a much improved athlete.
3. Enhance the Basics with more challenge through greater speed, more instability, resistance (from Lifeline equipment and/or medicine balls) that still allow for perfect form and skill. Now you have the perfect way to progress to power and take your performance to another level, no matter where you started.
What I’ve learned is that, "We already possess the greatest exercise machines in the world –– our bodies and minds."
Examples of Functional versus Non Functional exercises:
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Functional Exercise
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Non Functional Exercise - isolation
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Power Wheel Crawl
PROVEN in Clinical Study at Univ. of California at Berkeley to be the Best Functional Exercise for improving Core Strength & Stability in the World! Power Wheel crawls force the entire body to stabilize dynamically while crawling. Every step forces the body to restabilize and right itself.
Function: Full Body Strength
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Ab Crunch
Your lying on the floor doing an Ab Crunch, core is supported and not truly working as it is designed. The Ab Crunch exercise works to focus on and build up isolated muscle groups.
Non Function: Getting a truly strong core
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Jumping Rope
Probably the singe best piece of Function Exercise equipment you can own. Increases balance & stability in the ankles (calves) and knees (thighs), engages entire upper body, core musculature, reduces injuries and builds incredible anaerobic & aerobic conditioning. One of the single best functional exercises ever for the whole body! Boxers use this exercise so extensively because their livelihood depends on conditioning and being able to react quickly.
Function: Agility, Conditioning
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Seated Calf Raises
There is a myth that calf raises help prevent ankle injuries. But the fact is that Seated Calf Raises do not help in any way to prevent ankle injuries! The fixed line of resistance and ROM improve strength on the machine only.
This is a non functional exercise purely for ‘looks’.
Non Function: Big calves
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Jump Training
Jumping vertically improves one’s power and thus your ability to vertical jump! Bench Jumps, Hurdle Jumps, and Squat Jumps are just a few examples of jump training that dramatically improve power, speed, agility, and strength outputs, which greatly aids athletic performance. Perfect for athletes needing jump training and/or lateral speed and agility training. An exercise that requires great ankle and knee stability for sure, without it you cannot jump high. Thus progressing slowly in Jump Training improves your power and vertical in a safe manner for your entire body.
Function: Full Body Power
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Leg Presses
The leg press improves strength on a leg press machine and is great for bodybuilding. Because of the leverage advantage and the fact that it’s balanced for you, people can load the machine with 1,000 pounds of resistance. Makes you wonder, is this really how much weight is needed to do fewer reps with this machine? Why not do one-legged squats or lunges? They do the same job of building up the thighs and buttocks and can take you to fatigue in just a few reps too without having to load them with thousands of pounds of very dangerous weight!
Non Function: Leg Press Strength
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Cable Cleans (D-Ball & KB too)
A strong back involves much more than your “lats”—it relies on your entire body. If your back, core and legs cannot support the resistance first, then you cannot lift whatever it is off the floor! The Clean is an awesome Functional Exercise that trains everything. Completely unlike the Machine Row (where you are completely supported), this exercise engages the lower back and hips to do its job through a full ROM, stabilizing and extending.
Function: Full Body Power
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Machine Rows
When doing machine rows, the core stability is killed as soon as you lay over the bench. 0% stability trained = 0% gained! They make the machine like this to not injure the low back. But what the heck is the point of rowing 100 pounds with your upper back, if in reality your lower back can only hold 50 pounds? That makes no sense. The simple point here is that if you need to lift something up in this position, it is your lower back and legs that stabilize and lift first
Non Function: Machine Strength
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Handstand Push-Ups
Many non functional exercise magazine articles claim that push-ups are an ok exercise, but not great. People say since push-ups cannot build up your body much because you only use your own body weight that the bench press is better. This is simply not true. Resistance is resistance and increasing your load will constantly make you stronger. Case in point, the push up uses about 65-70% of your bodies weight, you weigh 200, you lift 135 lbs. Too easy, a handstand push up is 100% bodyweight or 200 lbs. Still too easy, walk up & down stairs. Believe me, few can do that. And I guarantee you, the ones that can, are crazy strong and look it too! That is full body Functional Exercise, incredible balance, stability, strength & power!!
Want more challenge? Add resistance. The Power Push Up can add 30-300 lbs to push ups (VOTED BEST PIECE OF EQUIPMENT BY MENS HEALTH MAGAZINE).
Function: Full Body Strength
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Bench Press/Machine Chest Press
Without question the most popular exercise in any gym—except mine. “What do you bench?” has become the false measuring stick of how strong a person is, not functional exercise.
My beef with the bench is if your training your whole body to work together, then how can you expect to push hard and not have another weak area right next store, like your back. So what if you can bench 300 lbs if your back can only hold 100 lbs of pressure when standing and pushing.
You can’t train anywhere with the Bench, unless you feel like carrying a bench press and a couple hundred pounds of resistance around with you.
Come to think of it, that might be a good way to make isolated exercise machines useful—carry, push or pull them to different locations to work out!
Non Function: Bench Strength
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That is why we only train with Functional Exercise; it is real world fitness, you can do it anywhere, anytime, any age.
I want you to be totally self-sufficient and to depend only on your body and mind for functional exercise. That way you can be healthy anywhere you are, no matter if it’s indoors or outdoors, traveling, at home, or at the gym. Once you learn how to use your body for functional exercise and motivate yourself, it stays with you. It’s like riding your bike, you never forget. Big gyms don’t want you to know this, because for them to be successful they need all those expensive machines to work and not independent, motivated people. So you now can train anywhere, anytime for functional exercise. You can even now train with us online at: www.monkeybargym.com where functional exercise is all we do!
The equipment that we use is your body, first and foremost. If you learn how to use your body, you can do almost any functional exercise that you want. As in all sports, it is most important to perfect your form before adding resistance to make your body stronger and faster at the same movement. In nature all animals continuously train to perfect technique; why should we do any differently?
"Quick fixes do not work. All lasting inner change requires time and effort. Persistence is the mother of personal change." –– Robin S. Sharma
Jon Hinds, CSCS, former NBA Strength Coach and NFL and MLB strength advisor, Owner & Founder of the Monkey Bar Gymnasium
www.monkeybargym.com
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