When people start exercising or decide to revamp their current routine, they sometimes find themselves looking over options, unsure of what to do. Often, you’ll see two distinct groups: those who advocate focusing on traditional weight training and those who prefer functional training. Fortunately, it’s not a one-or-the-other situation. Both styles have their place in your workout and can benefit your overall health.
Let’s talk about what each type of training is. Functional training involves doing activities that mimic moves that we perform in the real world, conditioning us to be more efficient in everyday life and avoid injury. In functional training, you’re learning how to lift, push, press, jump, unload heavy boxes, pull open a heavy door, carry a kid, jump over a curb and run a mile. You might also add weight to these moves in a safe manner, but the focus is not on isolated muscular training.
It’s likely you have tried weight training at one time or another. Traditional weight training targets one or two muscle groups, maximizing the load, which ultimately increases the strength, tone and size of the worked group. Weight training incorporates dumbbells and barbells, plate-loaded machines, pre-loaded machines and cable pulleys. In weight training, you train for a certain number of sets and reps per exercise and then move onto the next. Ideally you work with enough weight that the last couple of reps are difficult or impossible, maximizing the stress to that working muscle. This process teaches the body to increase its muscular output in order to perform a specific task efficiently.
Weight training helps maintain equal strength within the muscles, supporting your functional training as well as your everyday activities. For example, if your hamstrings (the back of your thigh) are weaker than your quadriceps (the front of your thigh), the contraction of your quads may be too strong, which can cause damage to your joints and ligaments. Improving muscular balance by incorporating an isolation move like hamstring curls or stiff leg deadlifts can improve your strength and support you for your next run, boot camp, CrossFit session or movement class.
If you have read my column a few times, you probably know by now that I am a bodybuilder and support the traditional methods of strength and weight training. When I’m exercising, I focus on isolating each muscle group, but I utilize a lot of functional moves as well. Bodyweight moves and plyometric exercises are amongst my favorites. These are a nice addition to amp up my heart rate, burn calories, stay agile, lose fat, develop coordination and help condition for the heavy lifts.
To sum up, we should try not to rely on only one mode of training. Traditional weight lifting will help you define and isolate specific groups, keeping you strong, balanced and lean. Functional training will help you become faster and more explosive, and will assist in other activities whether on the field, the court or in the pool. Don’t neglect one for the other; incorporate both for a well-balanced program.
// Kara Wutzke is a fitness trainer who offers boot camps and individual classes in Guangzhou. She can be contacted by emailing k2fit.gz@gmail.com or through WeChat ID: KaraK2Fit.
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