What is "FUNCTIONAL" Movement Training ?

Transcript

[Music] hey what's up this is Anthony Davis with shapeshift wellness and I'd like to make a video explaining what I believe my at least my own definition of the term functional is in return in regards to movement or fitness exercise yoga etc a lot of people have made their brand names for their companies include the word functional in it and myself and many many other much bigger names in you know Fitness and movement promote their systems as being functional so let's look at what that means or at least what I believe that should mean because it's become a term that means so many different things to so many different people that it's almost lost its meaning so here's what I mean when I say functional there are two things that I think make a movement functional the first and the most primary thing that I look for in a movement whether I believe it is a functional movement is I look at human anatomy and human evolution to say what is it that human beings need to be able to do that basically every human being needs to be able to do with their body in order to be healthy for example if you cannot move your ankle joint let's just hypothetically say you cannot move your ankle joint at all then you are going to have a very hard time walking running jumping transporting yourself from point A to point B anywhere and if we didn't have social systems to help people with disabilities like that you would in the wild you would be you'd be totally screwed because you can't move your ankle and that means again you cannot run you cannot walk you cannot jump you cannot do any of those things that are necessary for a human being to survive evolutionarily speaking obviously it's a little bit different when we're talking about modern human civilization but I look to human evolution when I try to determine whether I think a movement is functional so the ankle joint for example must be able to move it must be able to dorsi flex and plantar flex and if you don't have a certain amount of dorsiflexion and a certain a certain amount of plantar flexion then you're not going to be able to walk or run without stubbing your toe or tripping over yourself constantly so there's going to be a certain range of motion for that joint that's functional however you're also going to find that if you have extra range of motion beyond a certain point that then that joint which needs to be strong and stable to you know certain degrees if it's too mobile if it has too much motion in it then it becomes unstable it becomes less strong less resilient more likely to get injured because it's too mobile it's hyper mobile okay so when I look at functional range of motion for any joint I look at how much motion does a joint need for you to accomplish your typical human activities okay again evolutionarily speaking how much range of motion does each joint need in order to accomplish a certain task and that is something that I would call functional movement so when I look at movements like yoga poses that require that you put your foot behind your head well no human being needs to be able to put their foot behind their head for survival no human being needs to be able to do the splits right in order to be healthy do splits doesn't make you healthier it doesn't make your joint stronger or your muscles stronger or your immune system stronger or you know what I mean it doesn't make you healthier to be able to do the splits it's not adding anything to your biological health right so anything beyond a certain point with hip mobility would be not a functional movement so whether you want to do those movements or not is up to you but I just don't think that it's functional to be hyper mobile I think you need a certain range of motion and too much is going to be is going to work against you and too little range of motion is also going to work against you so functional in terms of how much mobility functional mobility is going to be within a range and to and again we want to be like Goldilocks so not too not too much not too little we want it to be just right and that's that's my primary definition for the word functional when it comes to training however I will make an exception to that rule which is that you can use the term functional to also describe literally any function so I mean for example I mean every muscle has a function right my my deltoids function my you know if you use all of them at the same time is going to be shoulder abduction right so if I train abduction and I just train at that it that's it just abduction it's not some crazy compound you know try planar movement it's not this big fancy movement that most people who use the term functional movement are doing these big fancy movements right I can train just shoulder abduction and that's functional it's teaching the muscles which create that motion to properly serve the function of lifting my shoulder right that's a function and I'm serving I'm training the muscles and tissues to to serve that function right and so it doesn't have to be this big fancy thing and then lastly I'll say that although I really am NOT a fan of hyper mobility training the fact is that if your profession or your you know hobby that you you know deeply desire if something that is in your life demands greater mobility than your average person then for you you are going to have a different spectrum of what is a functional movement for you right so while most people don't need to be able to do the splits right and in fact I would say that most people if they tried to be become flexible enough to do the splits that it would actually be dysfunctional it would work against them it would not no longer help them but it would make their joints extra mobile extra prone to injury however if you're a if you are a gymnast pardon me and your profession as a gymnast or even if you know it's not your profession if it's your hobby it doesn't matter if you are a gymnast and in order to continue to be a gymnast you need to be able to do the splits and not just do the splits but you need to be able to do the splits actively in midair right then for you a functional movement is actually going to be training you to have active control over that extreme range of motion that for most people would be not helpful but for you as a gymnast you actually need that function to be strong so functional training for you is going to be really strong active control over the split position right so just keep in mind that the definition of functional is going to be a little bit different from person to person but in general for your average average person you know there's there's no reason to be training extra ranges of motion there's no reason to be doing those things because a human being just doesn't need to do them so if I teach functional yoga poses that means that I've looked at the yoga poses I've noticed that almost every yoga pose is a pose that requires hypermobility and I've taken those poses and I've reduced the range of motion dramatically and made sure that in order to do the poses that I teach you have to have complete control over your motion so that's what I call functional movement and that's when I teach a functional yoga class and I know that almost to some people a functional yoga class sounds ridiculous it sounds like an oxymoron because so many yoga poses are all just about hypermobility I understand that trust me but I do think there's a way to make yoga functional so that's it that's how I view the word functional and I know there are a million other ways that people look at the definition of functional and that's fine I'm not arguing with anybody here I'm just presenting what I think the term means to me and how I use it when I describe movement if you'd like examples of functional movement or what I believe to be functional movement please go to my website shapeshift wellness.com and there is a just enter your e-mail and you'll get all automatically send you out a link that you can take a free class of mine a full yoga class online totally free you can download it take it wherever you want and get a taste of how I teach and if you like that I do have a whole library of online classes that you can to but get the free class and check it out and yeah as always I always like to take questions for future videos so if you have any questions post them down in the comments be sure to like and please do to this so that you get early notifications whenever I do post a new video thank you very much I'll see you next time you