Functional training is all the rage (do the kids still use that expression?). It is also often misunderstood. Are squats on a Bosu functional? What about deadlifts? Bicep curls?

I have previously written my take on what functional training is, including a definition and examples of exercises that are functional for different activities like serving beer or tennis balls.

I have also stood on my isoap box on various fitness and skiing forums, sharing my theory about other training approaches that I believe are not functional (dysfunctional even).

Today I am going to conditionally take back what I have previously stated about how functional various exercises and workout programs are.

No, that’s not a typo.

You see, I had an epiphany about my own training that has lead me to change how I assess the functionality of a training program. It wasn’t my actual training that led to this epiphany. It was the result of my training.

I spent last week in California visiting my brother and his family. He took me on three bike rides while I was there, each one between 90 and 120 minutes long, and each one featuring a lot of hills. The last time I had been on a bike ride longer than about 30 minutes was in August – The last time my brother took me riding. In other words, I don’t ride much. But despite not being much of a cyclist, I wasn’t the slightest bit sore after any of these rides.

Honestly, I was surprised. I assumed I would be sore the day after the first ride (and worse the day after that). Nope. I thought about muscle soreness again today after skiing yesterday for the first time this season. Once again, no soreness. I started to think back to the last time I was really sore from taking part in an activity that I love, and I drew a blank. Over the course of a year, I ski, play tennis and ultimate, periodically go running or cycling (infrequently would be more accurate), and play hockey a few times. Regardless of whether I played two days ago or two months ago, I don’t get sore.

And it hit me: the best thing about the time I spend in the gym is that it lets me play. And that is my new assessment for how functional a training program is.

Does your training prepare you for the life you lead (or want to lead)? If yes, call it functional and keep at it. If the answer is no, then your program is neither functional, nor serving you well.

Interested in how I train to allow myself the pleasure of a sporty life without soreness? Check out that article I mentioned above about functional training.

Elsbeth Vaino is a personal trainer in Ottawa, Canada.

When it comes to exercise, most people either do too much or too little. I think this applies beyond exercise, but let’s stick with that for the moment.

Those of us in the fitness and nutrition fields write a lot about those who do too little, in the hopes of helping fight the growing obesity epidemic. Today, however, I am going to talk about the other end of spectrum: too much exercise.

We laud those around us who maintain a healthy lifestyle, and are motivated by, and impressed at their the feats of strength and dedication. I recently read about a man who has run everyday for the past 40 years. I’m sure most of us who read that were inspired, and impressed. But is that actually a good idea? In his case, he seems to be enjoying a great and long life, which is all we can really ask for. But is it because of his excessive dedication to running, or in spite of it?

Many of my clients are referred to me by their health care professional. They are runners; cyclists; soccer, hockey, tennis and ultimate players. Or at least they were, and hope to be again. But they fell victim to overuse injuries of one variety or another, and instead of enjoying their sport, they have spent months getting to know their physical therapists and chiropractors and orthotists and massage therapists and athletic therapists and osteopaths all too well. They make fantastic clients because they are incredibly motivated to get back to the athletic pursuits they used to love; and most do get back.

But they all have the same story. The individual details are different, but the fabric is identical:

One day, while enjoying [insert sport], I felt a slight pain in my [insert body part]. It felt odd, but I was able to keep enjoying [insert sport]. Over the next few weeks, the discomfort grew, but I kept playing. Weeks turned to months, and the discomfort that initially only occurred during the first or last few steps of [insert sport], now occurs constantly, and in sometimes keeps me from sleeping.

At this point, they make a visit to their health care professional of choice, but often continue to play in pain. What is it that makes us ignore the very clear signals our body provides? I talk about this without judgment, as I have been there. I know what it’s like to include “vitamin I” as part of my daily nutrition (in fact for me it evolved to Celebrex). But most of these long term injuries are completely preventable. If we listen to, and respect, the pain signals our body gives, we can avoid months (sometimes years) of pain and medical expenses. The irony of course is that our effort to not miss a few days or weeks of our beloved sport leads to missing weeks, months or even years of our beloved sport.

So I ask: are you strong enough to take a break when something feels off?

I didn’t used to be, but I am now. Years of regular hip pain, followed by surgery and significant loss of cartilage in my hip is what it took for the message to get through my thick skull. I am finally strong enough and smart enough to listen when my body talks.

And it started to talk a couple of weeks ago. I have been working on getting stronger in my split squats and deadlifts. I love lifting heavy weights; particularly deadlifting. It just feels incredible. And I have become part of an incredible group of women spread across the globe who all lift heavier weights than is typical for women. Watching the feats that these other incredible women do in the weight room motivates me to want to keep pushing myself to more lifting personal bests. But I started to get a small twinge of pain in my hip. I’m not sure what caused it, and it isn’t overly painful. But it is not normal. And I know that I don’t want to go back to being an Advil junkie; or to spending another several years and thousands of dollars on athletic therapy sessions. So I chose to listen.

It was weird initially. I started to rationalize, trying to convince myself that it was just a one time fluke, and that I should hold off on the deadlifts, but I can surely keep doing the split squats without harm. I’m either getting smarter or my rationalizing skills are waning, but this time it didn’t work, and I have taken deadlifts and all variety of squats out of my training for a while. I’m not talking about eternity in purgatory; just a short hiatus from the big lifts. Here’s the cool thing though: there are still ways to get a really great workout. And for those who feel that they need to exercise to keep the weight off: IT IS POSSIBLE TO CUT BACK ON EXERCISE AND NOT GAIN WEIGHT. For serious. Really really. I kid you not.

My new plan? It involves a bit more time rolling, stretching, and doing corrective exercises than usual, as well as a few visits to my massage therapist. The rest of the workout is full of fun strength training exercises (Yes, I refer to strength training as fun. What?). Here’s an example of a “I’m taking it easy” strength circuit from last week:
3 circuits of:
Chinups (max effort)

Single leg shoulder elevated hip lifts (10 ea with 70# added – killer!)

Half-kneeling cable chops (10 ea with 100#. Rotational core strength = optimal power transfer between upper and lower body. If you are not strong here, you are not strong. Period.)

Half-kneeling cable lifts (10 ea with 60#).

If you look at the videos, I think you’ll agree that they are not easy, and that I’m getting my butt kicked. There are always options that will allow you to build strength and work hard without pain. Often it can be done while helping you improve your movement quality. Take these opportunities if you need them!

What do you do you when your body says “Hey, so, if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to avoid this activity for a while”? And what’s your workout plan so that you can stay sane while your body stays healthy?

Elsbeth Vaino trains athletes in Ottawa, Canada.

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This article is part of my blog-series: My Favourite Training Tools (For my American readers, please excuse the ‘u’ in favourite. It’s a Canadian thing). There are probably thousands of tools out there for fitness. Some are ridiculous fly-by-night items, others have been mainstays for hundreds of years, and now and then there is a new kid on the block that is clearly here to stay. Through this blog-series, I’ll share with you the tools that I think are worth including in your home or commercial gym.

Number six on my list of favourite training tools is the chin up bar. As I write this, I wonder how it only made it to number six. If this was a “top 10 exercises that make me feel awesome” list, pull ups (palms away) and chin ups (palms toward you) would probably rank number one. But in reality, most people can’t do them (yet!), so we need other tools to be build up our strength so you can do them. This is where things like free weights (#1 on my list) and the TRX (#5 on my list) come in handy. I use them for building overall strength and stability first, and then I also use them to help clients progress to pullups. Here are a couple of how to exercise videos showing the pull up progressions that I use to get clients to be able to do pull ups:
Read more…

If you’ve read my stuff before, then you know that I am, well, a big geek. I think I probably took fitness geek to a whole new level with my bench press assessment article, talking about the work value of a bench press based on arm span. I think this article will further raise the bar on geek in the fitness industry.

This article is about what typical problem areas I see based on the Functional Movement Screen (FMS for those who like to keep things short) assessments that I perform. Not familiar with the FMS? Check out functionalmovement.com, or read on for a brief overview. Then follow the article to see an overview of the results I’ve seen in terms of what functional movements tend to cause the most problems, and how the results are different based on gender and whether someone is an athlete.

Lastly, I’ll share my take on what this should mean for your training (or programming for trainers) if you do not have access to the FMS or other assessment options to help guide you.
Read more…

Bench press is a great exercise, but for anyone with a shoulder issue, it may not be ideal. How do you know if you should bench? Well for starters, if it hurts to bench, you probably shouldn’t bench. What if it doesn’t hurt during the bench, but it hurts later, you ask? Same answer. I suspect you knew that but were hoping for a different answer. Sorry.

If the bench press is painful for you, you should probably be seeing a manual therapist (athletic therapist, chiro, massage therapist, osteopath, physio…) to help get you to pain free state. But once you reach that point, then what?

Ideally you would switch to other exercises, at least for a while. I want my clients to be able to do at least 10 proper bodyweight pushups (Click here for an article all about pushups) before I will have them bench press, and then I get them to do the Bottom Up Kettle bell (KB) bench press before moving to “normal” bench pressing.

I love it because it requires a lot of stabilizing to be able to do it, which means my clients literally will not be able to do it if they lack strength or stability in their shoulders. If they can’t do the bottom up KB bench press, they are not ready to bench press. Period.
Read more…

I have become fascinated by the effect of different body size and shape on performance, both in sport and in the weight room. It is pretty obvious in some sports – the tall person is almost certainly going to do better in a sport like basketball than the short one. Not only is he taller, but she’s got a better reach. Height rules in many sports. But what about the weight room?
Read more…

When I first saw a video of someone doing a pendulum with a TRX, I thought it looked
Amazing but also very challenging. Here is a video from Experiencelifemag.com showing what it looks like:

Right away I wondered how someone who didn’t’ already have a strong core would do it. For some reason I think this way a lot. Maybe I’m going to my engineering roots here; trying to re-engineer exercises. There was the stability ball roll-out progression, the new approach to pullup progressions, and a look at pushups, including progressions that I did in an article with Bret Contreras (I’ll post once the article gets published). Whatever the reason, I like progressions!

But I digress – back to the story line…I didn’t really think further about the TRX pendulum until yesterday when it hit me: Start with a half-pendulum. Read more…

Raise your hand if you’ve seen people do pullups and thought “pft – what a stupid exercise; nobody wants to be able to do that.” Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? (If you don’t know this reference, then it’s time to catch up on your 80s pop culture movies. Or time to say “wow, she’s old”. Either or.).

Read more…

This might seem like a strange item to include in my top 10 list, because it is probably not considered an essential tool by many. So why is it on my list? Because it is fun. And because anyone can do it. And most people should do it. But most people don’t do it.

I had an epiphany recently. My programs might be a little too serious. I’m a big geek. Some of you may not realize that before I became a trainer, I was an engineer. So being a geek is kind of part of the package. And when I put together fitness programs for clients, I look at it as though I’m designing a system. That means attention to every detail. Literally every element of every program has a raison d’etre. That probably doesn’t sound like a bad thing. But what is one of the common threads I hear from reluctant trainees? “It should be fun”. I think all of my programs are fun, of course. I mean come on – half-kneeling chops and lifts! Squats and deadlifts! Fun, fun, fun and fun. Intervals?
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“I always always always shock my body with new exercises.”
“I love it when my muscles are sore, because it means I worked hard.”

I hear some version of those two statements often. Usually it’s people excitedly telling me about their new workout routine. When I see people that say this 3 months later, they usually are not working out anymore, and do not look any different than they did 3 months prior.
Read more…