Traditional weight training – machine circuits and free weights – presents two big problems for fitness professionals. First, you eventually bore your clients and cause them to quit, costing you business. Second, while you may help them develop “beach muscles,” you aren’t showing them the best way to develop true strength.

What if, instead of focusing on helping your clients get through another boring circuit of weight machines, you helped them develop true strength, power, and endurance?
Imagine adding yards to a golfer’s drive, helping a football player gain an edge in the final two minutes of a game, enhancing one’s ability to lift heavy objects at work (without injury), and helping emergency personnel be better prepared to rescue victims or apprehend criminals. Even moms who have to lift heavy groceries or carry a baby around all day can benefit from improved strength and endurance.

So, what are the details of this program?

First, most of your clients will be tapped out in 30 minutes or less and yet still get the benefits they need. This workout is extremely efficient and not about doing “one more rep.”

Second, our training tools are different than with traditional training. Most of the exercises simulate real-life style asymmetrical exercises that challenge the muscles (and our balance) to adapt. That’s the key to building real strength.

Start with some innovative body weight exercises – solo and with partners. Examples include the bear crawl, alligator crawl, push ups where you work with a partner to support each other’s weight, and slow motion balancing routines. These exercises can easily be adapted based on the experience level of your clients; they don’t need to be hardcore.

Then move to the kettlebell. Originally developed in Russia as a way to keep submarine personnel strong yet compact, kettlebells change the inertial forces while move in non-linear patterns, just as we do in crisis situations, in a rescue situation, and in most sports. If you don’t have kettlebells, you can substitute weight plates.

You can also work out with improvised objects such as rockballs and sandbags. Both are easy to make with simple supplies found at any hardware store. These are great training tools, because they prepare your clients for carrying or resisting heavy objects in real life situations when weights are not evenly distributed and when movement is not symmetrical.

There are many other types of routines to build real strength, power, and endurance: weight sleds, resistance bands, medicine balls, weight plates, and hanging straps. All of these can be used to create routines that force people to adapt to awkward and non-linear forces.

Some aspects of the above concepts may seem like a risky and unconventional break from tradition for many fitness professionals. However, if you incorporate them into your routines, you will see improvements in client results, enthusiasm, retention, and referrals.

Frank DiMeo is the President of the American Strength Training Institute. For more information visit www.americanstrengthtraining.com.
 

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written by ealicea, February 04, 2010

I enjoyed your article and agree that diversity is the key to success. I plan on implementing the techniques you highlight with my future practice.

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written by NITROFORCE, February 07, 2010

Now there is something to think about. Training your body to look good AND perform great! This is something I have been focusing on for some time and was reletively absent from my training approach years ago. Getting strong inside the gym with certain exercises is nice, but if fitness can be transfered to the real world outside of the gym, that is where it really counts.
FORM and FUNCTION should go hand in hand.

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written by lazur, February 17, 2010

Proper traditional weight training strengthens all of the muscles in the body. If a client doesn't think that's fun or interesting, fine, do something different..but so-called 'functional' training, won't strengthen muscles as well as old fashioned weight training. What it WILL do is strengthen SKILLS. But skills are SPECIFIC, and are performed with their own unique levels of resistance. Strengthening a skill isn't the same as improving a skill, and often degrades the skill when it's actually performed with its real-life load. (Ex: if you use a weighted basketball at practice, you'll throw the real one too far in the game.) Strength training & skill training must be separate, unless you're a weightlifter or powerlifter.

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written by tworster, March 15, 2010

I have enjoyed this stye of functional training for years. I have found that it allows me to help people of all ages and has allowed for greater quality of life for many of my clients. I have private training suites in my facility so we had to be creative in the tools we choose. I love the TRX straps, exercise bands and weighted balls. My clients range from teenagers to age 78. They love this style of training and have thanked me every day for helping them to gain the confidence that they need out in the world. Thanks for the post!

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written by lazur, March 15, 2010

My only real problem w/functional training is -not- w/functional training(!), but w/misleading statements functional trainers make about structural training. No doubt, functional training's fun, confidence-boosting, & fitness-enhancing. Do what you want, but leave traditional weight trainers alone: Mo more of that "show-muscle vs go-muscle" nonsense: Muscle is muscle, skill is skill. If a muscular man can't play baseball very well, (pick any sport or activity), it's because he doesn't play a lot of baseball, -not- because he didn't do any balance-ball, weighted ball, exercise straps, TRX, etc. training.

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