A Word on Functional Exercise

A WORD ON FUNCTIONAL EXERCISE

By Dr. Ken E. Leistner

When Jan Dellinger was the editor of MUSCULAR DEVELOPMENT MAGAZINE, a York Barbell Company monthly, I was asked to make a contribution to each issue for a number of years and gladly did so. In November of 1986, MD featured my article on using a farrier’s anvil for numerous exercises. Through mid-1987 I penned a series of articles that featured strength training using handled-beams, thick bars, and the pushing of trucks and automobiles. I was and remain less of an innovator than a copier and wrote those articles as a reflection of what I had done in preparation for my own high school and college football career and like others of my generation, never imagined that the organized sport of “Strongman” would come from these types of activities.

It was unusual for athletes, football players included to use weight training as a means to enhance muscular size and strength until the early 1970’s. Through the ‘50’s and 1960’s, most coaches and physicians were still convinced that a weight trained athlete would lose both running and limb movement speed, perhaps become clumsy and stiff, and somehow suffer in comparison to an opponent whose strength was built through what was considered “natural means” such as farm or construction work. The evidence of course differed and through the zealous participation of early strength coaches like Alvin Roy, Clyde Emrich, Stan Jones, and assistant football coaches like Arkansas’ Wilson Matthews who was charged with the responsibility of conditioning the teams of the late 1950’s, acceptance of barbell and dumbbell training grew. Having limited equipment and knowing that the work done in my father’s iron working shop had contributed to my strength, I carried the 130 pound shop anvil in various positions for additional work. I would hold a York 100 pound solid dumbbell in each hand and charge up the twenty-three steps to the loft of the shop as a “finisher” to many workouts. Barbell squats would be followed by pushing a car down our street, with the neighbors often yelling at my mother that “Your kid is throwing up all over the place.” The iron shop’s neighboring business was a tire supply company that provided tires for many of the major taxi companies and truckers in Manhattan, thus, with their permission I would roll a 300 pound tire onto 19^th Street and flip it to Eighth Avenue, then turn around and flip it end-over-end to Seventh Avenue before returning it to the tire garage in the middle of the block.

This type of work was not a substitute for the progressive resistance exercise with barbells and dumbbells that I did on a consistent basis. However, there were two major benefits that I immediately became aware of. The first was the opportunity to use my muscles in planes of movement that were neither limited by the standard barbell or dumbbells. While any exercise machine travels in a single plane of movement that is strictly governed by the path of the machine’s movement arm, a barbell must be “held” in its path of movement by the involved musculature. The actual movement pattern may have limitations but it is certainly broader than the same movement done on a machine. In the barbell press for example, the vertical movement is similar in using a machine or a barbell but there is more “work” being done with the unguided bar, other factors regarding the level of resistance being equal. The barbell or dumbbells are also designed to provide a balanced resistance. Picking up “odd objects” or objects such as an anvil, provides resistance that may be heavier on one end relative to the other, or its shape may dictate a very unbalanced load. The “requirements” for pulling a 280 pound concrete stone off of the ground are a bit different than that needed to do the same with a 280 pound barbell, giving what I might term a different “distribution” of work to the involved musculature.

Mickey Marotti, the exceptional strength and conditioning coach for the National Champion University Of Florida Gators football team once told me that he liked to have his players perform the “odd object” or “strongman type” of activities because “most of them have never done truly hard work and don’t know how to work hard physically.” We agreed that players may have a history of strength training and running to prepare for their seasons but when they arrive at college, they often don’t understand the discomfort or demands that are going to be placed upon their bodies. Mickey made the assertion, one I agree with, that unlike generations before, where most of the players were sons of manual laborers or tradesmen, the change in the culture and economy has made many of the trades and the jobs that demand a great deal of physical labor, obsolete. Thus, while Mickey and I and others of our generations worked alongside our fathers carrying bricks, hauling rivets, or stacking hay by hand, working in shops, factories, mills, and fields, all of this is foreign to today’s high school and collegiate player. As Coach Marotti emphasized, it’s the job of the strength coach to teach the incoming players how to work hard and compete with themselves and their teammates at the necessary level of intensity. Using what has been termed “functional movements,” all of which will require hard effort, a degree of physical discomfort, and at angles and planes that the athlete usually doesn’t work in, is a great adjunct to standard weight room work.