Functional Strength - Are You Missing the Point? (Part 1)

Unless you have been living under a rock (or at least, since 300 came out) you've likely heard the term "Functional Strength" a few times. If you're involved directly with the strength and conditioning world, you've probably heard the term from about 100 people, with 120 definitions. Everyone seems to agree on at least one point - that functional strength refers to the idea of applying strength training in activities other than strength training. It seems pretty straight forward to me. Unfortunately, there seem to be quite a few different schools of thought as far as how you actually build functional strength, as opposed to non-functional. This is especially important for the training of athletes, where the entire function of the training itself is only to improve performance in a sport.

It's not unusual for there to be differing schools of thought regarding some aspect of strength and conditioning. I honestly don't even consider it a bad thing. I start to have issues right about the time I start talking to this guy:

"Oh I don't lift weights or do any of that bodybuilding stuff anymore, I'm working on functional strength."

Okay, so you don't see the point in doing concentration curls, cable crossovers or machine leg extensions to improve your football performance. That's fine, but this guy came up and started talking to me when I was doing box squats. It isn't the first time this has happened either, on a personal or professional scale. I've heard this language used even in interviews with the coaching staff of professional and collegiate sports teams - that they're leaving the entire weight room behind in pursuit of functional strength, opting instead for a whirlwind of tire flipping, rope undulations, mercilessly beating tires with sledgehammers and whatever else they can scribble down while watching UFC All Access. When did squats, deadlifts, pressing and benching get thrown in with the hydraulic preacher curl machine?!

Ultimately, the problem starts and ends with people misunderstanding this simple fact:
Strength is strength.
Functional strength isn't different from strength, it's a mixture of STRENGTH (the contractile potential of the muscle tissue itself) and SKILLS (the speed and efficiency by which the brain and nervous system can assess, interpret and react to a given stimulus). Strength + skills. It's that simple. Misunderstanding this is what leads to anecdotal arguments like this:

"When I used to work for a moving company, there was a guy that we hired who was huge and lifted crazy weights at the gym, but he had no functional strength compared to the guys that lifted couches all day. Even I could do the job easier than him and I was half his size."

This sort of example isn't uncommon, and it feeds into the idea that this guy was missing some kind of special strength that can only be obtained by lifting couches. What the veteran movers had that he didn't were skills. While they didn't have the strength he had, they had spent years grooving the neuromuscular patterns necessary for the specific demands of their job, making more efficient use of what strength they did have. This makes a huge difference, and once the stronger man learns the skills necessary for the job, it'll be much easier for him than it is for the others.

We see this all the time in BJJ and MMA. Of course a skinny 150lb purple belt is going to humiliate a muscular 200lb white belt most of the time because of the huge skill disparity. However, give it a couple of years and now it's a 200lb blue belt against a 150lb brown belt. The brown belt may still win more often than not, but I guarantee it will be a very different match. The 200lb fighter didn't have to catch his skills all the way up to the 150lb fighter's level, he just needed to gain enough skills to apply his strength advantage. This is why we have weight divisions.

Odd Lift/Strongman movements like hitting a tire with a sledgehammer address neuromuscular development, by building "specific power production". This is the ability to channel the strength of all of your individual muscle groups in a team effort to do something more specific, like hitting the tire. This, with enough repetition forms the basis of the "skill" of hitting the tire. That skill will increase your aptitude for applying your strength in other specific ways that are neurologically similar, like swinging a baseball bat, or throwing a punch. Ultimately nothing will improve skills for your sport more than playing your sport (SERIOUSLY), but the sledgehammer/tire provides an easy way to make the training repeatable, scaleable and trackable - very important for goal-setting.

Now, here's the important part. While doing these kinds of unconventional movements can be great for specific power production and conditioning, you can think of them as shaping a clay sculpture - taking what clay you have and applying it differently. The clay itself is your baseline level of strength, and you can shape it as many different as you want but at some point, you may simply need more clay. These kinds of movements will never build actual baseline strength anywhere near as quickly or effectively as plain old squats, deadlifts, pulling and pushing using barbells, dumbbells and kettlebells. If a football player can't squat his bodyweight, he isn't going to get the same benefit from flipping tires as another player that can. Even strongman competitors will do a lot of weekly volume of basic weight training, and the wierd unconventional stuff is the actual sport they play. Given a similar skill set for the yoke carry event, a strongman competitor that can squat 600lbs will be able to move a 400lb yoke a lot easier than another one that squats 400lbs.

To sum up Part 1 - Go ahead and do all the crazy alternative stuff you want, but it shouldn't be all you do. If you're serious about being a better athlete, don't neglect the basics. The first step to being functionally strong is being strong, period.

Stay Tuned for Part 2!