5 BENEFITS TO FUNCTIONAL HYPERTROPHY
When functional fitness burst onto the scene chasing a pump and doing isolation exercises became taboo, a waste of time. I'm here to tell you there is a time and place for this and it can have many benefits. Here are 5 reasons you should rethink your programming.
1: Increased Lean Body Mass - By most standards hypertrophy training requires little skill allowing most trainees the ability to truly push to get the most out of every session. With increase lean body mass to fat mass ratio your body's metabolism will work more efficiently creating a healthier body composition and you will love the way you look, ATHLETIC and AESTHETIC!
2: More volume - Much of the time when people are reaching for more out of their training they first go to more sets and reps of the big compound lifts. Although that may help simply to do more of what you're already doing that is what call working harder. My goal as a coach is to get those to work smarter by purposeful movement selection and get as much as we can out of working as little as possible. Doing too much of the multi-joint movements can wreck havoc on your joints. I love to train and my hope is be training when I'm 70-80+ years old. I want to be able to one up my grandkids when they start hitting the gym not be saying, "Back in my day..."
3: Translate to other movements/ skills - If you want to improve the more "functional" lifts like squat, deadlift, press, pull, etc you much improve your contractile potential by increasing the cross-sectional size of your muscle fibers. If you lift for the purpose of getting big you will get strong in the other areas (don't worry ladies there is little chance you will get bulky without drugs changing your hormones extremely rare genetics). Hip thrusts create a stronger deadlift, bicep hammer curls create the ability to do more pull-ups, single leg squats will help your barbell squat and running... The list goes on.
4: Low central nervous system (CNS) demand - Our central nervous system can only output so much energy. Over time as we continue to push the envelope it can have a drastic effect on our hormone health causing a cascade of detrimental events.
5: Be more resilient - We all have our muscular imbalances. For some it's more obvious such as you can't press with your right arm as much as your left,. Other times it is not so obvious maybe your overdeveloped chest is creating shoulder issues or your back hurts after you squat. Using isolated strength exercises to work on your areas of weakness can be a total game changer to prevent future injuries and/or rehabilitate a current injury.
We can't do all of it in a day but we should do something each time we train. Working smarter rather than harder needs to be guided by a professional coach who understands your body and needs. Functional for you may not be the same for the next person and that's why we say "functional fitness" is determined by the person not the movement.
