I was in a ranting mood recently and posted the following after hearing yet another ridiculous claim about how some new gadget is going to revolutionize the fitness industry, forever change the way people exercise, and give you rock hard, six pack abs, and is totally different from anything that has come before it, because it’s called something else and is sold using totally new pseudoscientific jargon and marketing buzzwords.

The majority of the fitness industry are idiots and hucksters who are more concerned with their ability to sell you programs and products than whether those programs or products have any merit. These people are not looking at the science, thinking critically about existing methods and exploring or experimenting with better ways of doing things and asking, “How can we come up with a way to help people get better results, more quickly, more efficiently, and more safely?” Instead, what they are asking is, “How can we come up with something new to sell?”

I have nothing against anyone wanting to make a profit, but it must be by offering people something of equal value for the price, not convincing people to give you money for bullshit with fancy marketing.

Most of the claims of innovation and breakthroughs are nothing but hyperbole. While progress is being made, it is generally being made in very small steps by numerous number of people communicating and sharing information, and usually not the people who are making lots of noise and claiming to be doing so. Very rarely does any one individual or small group make a huge discovery or revolutionize a field, and we haven’t seen anything in exercise that compares to what Arthur Jones did with the invention of the Nautilus machines four decades ago since then, no matter what anybody tells you.

I would love to say I am an innovator, that I’ve come up with some breakthrough method or program, or that I’m revolutionizing the field somehow, but that would be bullshit. I am simply trying to organize what I know and continue to learn into practical systems and present it in a way people find useful.

More often than not, I’m not teaching anything new so much as I am debunking the constant output of bullshit from the rest of the industry.

Considering just how much of what passes for expertise in this industry is bullshit, it is prudent to assume everything you hear about exercise and nutrition is bullshit until proven otherwise. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If someone is claiming to have come up with a breakthrough program or device, demand proof.

My son has the following excerpt from the book Maybe Yes, Maybe No: A Guide For Young Skeptics, by Dan Barker framed and hung on the wall of his room, and I think everybody would benefit from keeping these in mind when confronted with claims about exercise:

“Whenever you are trying to decide if something is true or false, remember these Rules of Science

Check It Out: Don’t just believe what you hear or read. If something is true, you should be able to check it out for yourself.

Do It Again: If you check it out once, you should be able to check it out again. If you do a test or experiment, you should be able to repeat it.

Try To Prove It Wrong: Don’t just try to prove that something is true. A good scientist also tries to prove that it is false.

Keep It Simple: Sometimes there is more than one way to try to explain something. If one way is complicated and another way is simple, scientists usually choose the simple way.

It Must Make Sense: If something is true, then it should not be confusing. It should be logical. That means you should think about it very carefully to see if it makes sense.

Be Honest: Everybody makes mistakes, and good scientists will admit their mistakes right away.”

“What gets measured, gets managed.” – Peter Drucker

Keeping accurate records of your workouts, food intake, and goal-specific measurements provides several benefits. It allows you to determine whether the things you want to improve are really improving, and if so how much. It also helps you to improve the effectiveness of your workouts and diet by indicating whether changes need to be made, and when changes are made what effect they have on your results.

Keeping records of these things also keeps you mindful of them and encourages you to make better decisions about them. Even if you’re not accurately weighing or measuring all of your food, just recording what you eat causes you to think more carefully about it and make better choices. When you keep records of your workouts you’re more likely to consistently put forth your best effort because you want to see those numbers improve. Records of goal specific measurements posted in a conspicuous place can help remind you of your goals and keep you focused on achieving them.

Goal-Specific Measurements

If your goal is to produce some change in your body composition or size you need to measure the thing you want changed and compare over time. If your goal is to improve some aspect of athletic performance or your ability to perform a specific sport or vocational task you need to measure and track it. If these measurements show steady improvement you’re doing things right, if not you know you need to re-evaluate your program, diet, practice, etc. and make changes. When you do, further measurements will allow you to determine whether the changes were beneficial, harmful, or made no difference.

Workout Charts

Workout charts allow you to evaluate progress over time and to compare the effects of changes in your program on goal-specific measurements. Minimally, you should record the date of each workout, the amount of weight used and the number of repetitions completed in good form (poorly performed reps should not be counted) on each exercise, and the order the exercises were performed in if it varies from the written order. I also recommend keeping track of the workout start and end time and notes on overall performance, such as exercise form and how you felt over the course of the workout. Recording the start time can help you determine whether you do better training during some times of the day than others, and recording the end time allows you to track overall workout duration and evaluate improvements conditioning and your ability to minimize rest between exercises.

When charting workouts it is important to keep in mind the records are for comparison and evaluation over time for the sake of adjusting your program to your body’s response to exercise, and not an end in themselves. Your goal is not to make numbers go up on paper, but to effectively stimulate improvements in functional ability, health, and appearance. If you focus on doing that, the numbers will show you how well you are doing. If you focus on the numbers you will tend to perform your exercises in a way that makes it easier to complete more repetitions rather than harder, which is the opposite of what you want.

Keep in mind the better you are at an exercise the harder it is, and if two people of equal strength perform an exercise with the same amount of weight the one who is better at the exercise will achieve momentary muscular failure more quickly and complete fewer repetitions because they are performing the repetitions in a way that is more challenging. When you increase the resistance used for an exercise it should be because you were capable of performing some number of repetitions despite attempting to make the exercise as hard as possible. Because of this, and because many other factors affect workout performance, it is important to evaluate your workout records over periods of many weeks rather than on a workout to workout basis. This is also why you should only count properly performed repetitions, and why you should make additional notes on performance.

Diet Journal

Depending on  your goals a diet journal may simply be a list of what you eat over the course of a day, or a detailed record of the weight or volume of everything you consume along with breakdowns of calorie, macronutrient, and micronutrient content, meal times, blood glucose and urine tests, etc., or something in between.

This is helpful whether you are trying to lose fat, build muscle, or improve athletic performance or overall health, not only because it allows you to compare changes in these with your diet but also because when you are recording it you will tend to be more conscious about your eating and make better choices.

Accountability

Being accountable to someone else for this can help you be more disciplined about keeping track. More importantly, other people will usually be more objective in evaluating your records and can help give you needed reality checks when something isn’t working, or when it is working well and you’re being too hard on yourself or have unrealistic expectations.

It helps to partner with someone with similar goals and be accountable to each other, and agree to perform measurements and to regularly review and evaluate workout and diet records and give objective feedback and advice when required. As long as it is not your wife or girlfriend. Don’t even try to give your wife or girlfriend objective feedback on her eating, weight, or body fat. It’s just not worth the trouble. Have her partner with a friend instead, or get her a personal trainer.

If you are a trainer, make your clients do this. I’ve done it on and off with different clients over the years, and the ones who are measured or tested on a regular basis and who keep track of their eating consistently get better results than those who don’t.

Question:

Assuming the same number of exercises and sets over a period of a week or two is it better to work out longer but less frequently, or shorter but more frequently?

Answer:

I am frequently asked a lot of variations of this question, usually along the lines of whether I recommend a full body or split routine, and if so how far to split up the workout and in what way. Like most things, the answer depends on the individual.

Recovery from and response to exercise involves multiple, interrelated local and systemic processes which can take more or less time depending on the individual, the muscles, how intensely they work them, and other factors. Local processes include repair of microtrauma and synthesis of new muscle tissue, and the microtrauma results in an inflammatory response which affects the rest of the body. The harder the training, the more muscles worked, or the higher the volume of exercise the greater the inflammatory response. If adequate time is not allowed for recovery and inflammation becomes chronic you will enter an overtrained state, and depending on the degree of overtraining either stop progressing or even regress and lose muscle mass. (Cytokine hypothesis of over training: a physiological adaptation to excessive stress?,” Medicine & Science in Sports and Exercise, Vol 32, No. 2, pp 317-331, 200).

Some people prefer to split up exercises into workouts organized by muscle group or body area, under the assumption you can work some muscles without affecting the recovery of others. However, regardless of how you split up exercises or what equipment you use there can be a lot of overlap in the muscles affected. You can do exercises that target different muscle groups in different workouts, but even when performing relatively isolatory exercises you will still use other muscles to maintain proper positioning and/or alignment and some of these may be under considerable tension depending on the loads used. A good example of this is the standing barbell curl. While it targets the biceps and other arm flexors, you use many other muscle groups to maintain proper positioning, most notably, your chest and shoulders maintain your upper arm position preventing your shoulders from extending (unless you are doing drag curls) and your back and hip extensors maintain your posture while the weight is held in front of you.

Although assuming a constant volume of exercise differences in distribution may have little effect on systemic recovery, training too frequently may still interfere with local recovery depending on the degree of overlap in muscular involvement between workouts. Just because two or more workouts target different muscle groups doesn’t mean you don’t need to rest between them.

There are downsides to training too infrequently, however. While there appears to be very little difference in muscular strength increases between training once, twice, or three times per week for most people (and some may require an even lower lower volume or frequency to avoid overtraining), metabolic conditioning appears to start to suffer at frequencies below twice weekly.

While individual recovery ability, goals, and situations vary considerably, I have found two full-body workouts a week to be a good starting point for most people. It is infrequent enough that most people will not overtrain if they keep the workouts relatively brief (only one set of around ten exercises including work for smaller muscle groups like neck, forearms, or calves) while frequent enough that metabolic and cardiovascular conditioning is not compromised. Some people do appear to get better results from split routines, though, possibly due to local recovery requiring longer than systemic (which may be the case for predominantly fast-twitch muscles).

If your recovery ability allows it you can distribute the exercises over slightly more frequent workouts, but I do not recommend working out more than three, non-consecutive days per week and it is better to err on the lower side with volume and frequency to avoid overtraining. If you need more time for recovery between workouts or circumstances prevent you from working out more frequently, you can also still make good progress on even very infrequent training provided when you do work out you do so very intensely.

Also, consider the optimal volume and frequency of training may vary depending on your body’s response to exercise and goals. You may get stronger faster with extremely brief and infrequent training, but your conditioning may improve more quickly with a slightly higher volume and frequency.

The best way to determine what you should do is to clearly define your training goals and track measurements specific to those goals along with your workouts, experiment, and adjust your workouts based on how your body responds.

If you’re a regular reader of this web site or if you know who Arthur Jones, Mike Mentzer, and Ellington Darden are nothing that follows will be news to you. This is for the people who keep misusing the term “high intensity training” to refer to things like sprint interval training and various faddish infomercial exercise programs. Whenever you come across one, please share this with them and hopefully it can help reduce confusion over what HIT is and is not.

The term “high intensity training” was coined by Ellington Darden, PhD, during a presentation at Duke University in 1975 to describe the Nautilus training principles:

• Intensity – train with a high level of effort, performing each exercise to the point of momentary muscular failure
• Progression – gradually increase the resistance you use as you get stronger and better conditioned
• Form – always maintain strict form to more efficiently load the targeted muscles and minimize risk of injury
• Duration – keep your workouts brief to avoid overtraining, perform only one set per exercise
• Frequency – allow adequate time for recovery and adaptation between workouts, training no more than three non-consecutive days per week
• Order – as a general rule perform exercises in order of the sizes of the muscle groups worked, from largest to smallest

In What Is High Intensity Training? I describe HIT as “…a form of progressive resistance exercise characterized by a high level of effort and relatively brief and infrequent workouts, as opposed to typical training methods involving low to moderate levels of effort and longer, more frequent workouts.”

Drew Baye with experts on real HIT, Ellington Darden, PhD (left) and Jim Flanagan (right)

Unfortunately, the term “high intensity training” is vague enough it can apply to almost anything done with a high level of effort including non-exercise activities. “High” is relative, “intensity” is usually incorrectly defined by others talking about exercise, and “training” can mean teaching, learning, or practicing a variety of skills and behaviors. Because of this vagueness, people currently use “HIT” to describe everything from sprint interval training to various resistance training programs done at a relatively fast pace.

If “high intensity training” is so vague, why does it matter how we use it? Because to effectively communicate it is necessary for terms to have specific, agreed upon meanings. If a word can mean anything it might as well mean nothing.

Additionally, a big problem is people getting injured doing other programs and incorrectly claiming they got hurt doing HIT. Having ignorant trainers out there teaching unscientific and often downright stupid exercise methods and programs and calling it HIT reflects negatively on those of us practicing and teaching real HIT (unfortunately, the same goes for many trainers and organizations who practice and teach real HIT very poorly, but I’ll write about that some other time).

While the term is vague, Ellington Darden set the precedent for its use in the context of exercise to refer to the kind of hard, brief, infrequent exercise described by the Nautilus training principles, and it has generally been used in that manner for almost four decades now.

If you’re performing max effort sprints (running, cycling, rowing, swimming, etc.) you are doing sprint interval training, not high intensity training. It shouldn’t even be called “high intensity interval training” or HIIT since the terms are too similar.

Unless you are performing proper exercises (with positioning and movements based on principles of efficient muscular loading) to momentary muscular failure (real high intensity) in strict form (with a controlled speed of movement and smooth turnarounds while maintaining proper body positioning and/or alignment and path of movement) you are not doing HIT.

Stated differently, if you’re doing so-called “functional” movements (movements mimicking sport or vocational skills rather than designed around specific muscle and joint functions), not consistently training to momentary muscular failure (after the initial learning stage/break-in period and with a few other exceptions), or doing your exercises in a fast, jerky manner emphasizing quantity of work over quality, you might be working hard, but you are not doing HIT.

CrossFit and its clones are not high intensity training. P90X, Insanity, and similar programs are not HIT. Those people jumping around, doing sloppy calisthenics, and sprinting in the park and calling it “boot camp” are not doing HIT. The majority of programs claiming to be high intensity training are not HIT. Regardless of what you’re calling it, unless your exercise program is based on the Nautilus training principles outlined above you are not doing or teaching HIT.

In the video below I discuss and demonstrate how high intensity training principles should be applied to bodyweight exercise. A more in-depth book and videos will be available later this summer.

For more information on the UXS click here

Question:

In this Q&A I’m going to address a few common questions about training to momentary muscular failure (MMF); what it is, whether it is necessary, and if it’s more effective to train past it.

Answer:

What is momentary muscular failure?

Your muscles fail when fatigue has momentarily reduced their strength to below the level required to continue an exercise in the prescribed form.

When performing typical dynamic exercise protocols your muscles fail when you are unable to continue positive movement (positive failure). When performing yielding isometric protocols like static holds your muscles fail when you are unable to hold the weight motionless preventing negative movement (static failure). When performing negative-only your muscles fail when you are unable to lower the weight as slowly as prescribed (negative failure).

Is it necessary to train to momentary muscular failure?

No. It is not necessary to train to MMF to stimulate improvements in muscular strength and size or other aspects of functional ability, you just have to consistently work your muscles harder than you did previously. However, since results from exercise are proportional to intensity of effort, you should train to MMF.

Exercise intensity is best defined as how hard you are working relative to your momentary ability. If at the beginning of an exercise your muscles are capable of producing one hundred pounds of force but you are only working against a resistance of eighty pounds your intensity is eighty percent. As your muscles fatigue over the course of an exercise the eighty pounds of resistance requires an increasing percentage of your decreasing momentary strength. When your strength has been reduced to just below eighty pounds all of your momentary strength will be required to  just hold  the resistance and you will be working at one hundred percent intensity.

With most equipment it is impossible to know your exact strength or intensity of effort at the beginning of or at any point during an exercise (and both one rep maximum and max effort isometric testing should be avoided for safety). The only time you know how intensely you are working is when you reach MMF, at which point your intensity is maximum.

Is it better to train past momentary muscular failure?

Yes, but only very briefly.

When performing normal dynamic repetitions the only way to be certain you have achieved MMF is to continue attempting to move positively for a few seconds. Occasionally when you think you have achieved MMF if you attempt to gradually contract harder you will find you are able to continue positive movement. You may only move a few more degrees or inches, or you may end up completing  another repetition. There is no way to be sure you have achieved positive failure unless you keep trying for at least a few seconds. However, beyond some point additional contraction post-failure appears to be counterproductive. Advanced trainees who routinely perform extended static holds, multiple forced reps, or  multiple rest-pause reps beyond failure often find they require a much longer time to recover between workouts. A little seems to go a long way, and it is very easy to overdo or misuse these techniques.

Some of these have uses when training beginners who are still learning to train with a very high level of intensity, but only very few, and they need to be done correctly and used very judiciously or they will not have the desired effect.

For most people I recommend only continuing to contract for about five seconds after positive movement stops. If you’re really contracting as hard as you can and the weight doesn’t move after five seconds you’re probably not going to move it, and you should just slowly lower it and unload.

When performing static holds, once you are unable to maintain the prescribed position you should slowly lower the weight, unload, and terminate the set. If you used an appropriate load and time additional reps are unnecessary and potentially counterproductive. I recommend a conservative range of around sixty to ninety seconds.

When performing negative-only repetitions you should unload and terminate the set when you are unable to perform the negative at least slowly enough to maintain a ten-second cadence. Never attempt to continue a negative-only set beyond this point.

 Question:

Is it possible to get as strong and muscular with bodyweight training as you can training with weights?

Answer:

As long as you train hard, progressively, and consistently you can get bigger and stronger with just about anything, including your own body weight; and I think most people can get just about as big and strong with bodyweight training as anything else if they do it correctly. The key is learning how to perform bodyweight exercises to make them progressively harder as you become stronger.

When using free weights and machines resistance progression is simple; as you become stronger and require more resistance you just add more weight to the bar, use heavier dumbbells, or pin more weight on the stack. Resistance progression is trickier with bodyweight. You can use weighted vests and belts to increase resistance, or you can manipulate other variables like leverage and timing, using body positioning to increase the leverage against the target muscles and spending proportionally more time in more challenging portions of the range of motion. For example, bodyweight squats can be made more challenging by only performing the harder lower half of the range of motion, and holding at parallel for a few seconds before slowly starting the positive (as opposed to only going down halfway and bouncing back up like most people).

Another option, if you have the motor control and discipline to do it, is what I call intentional antagonistic co-contraction or IAC. By intentionally contracting the antagonists of the target muscles during an exercise you can increase the intensity considerably. Assuming you have relatively balanced strength, if you learn to use IAC effectively no matter how strong you become you will be able to make any exercise as hard as you need it to be. There are several disadvatages to IAC, however. It takes time to learn, requires good motor control and focus, and makes evaluating workout performance more subjective.

A slightly less efficient but more easily quantifiable way to increase resistance is to wear a weighted vest or belt. While technically not pure bodyweight exercise, people who have difficulty with IAC will find it more practical and it allows more objective evaluation of workout performance.

A very challenging but less safe and efficient option for stronger trainees is to perform some exercises unilaterally. If you’re skeptical of how challenging bodyweight exercises can be I suggest you attempt a set of strict one armed chin ups, push ups, or squats. Unless you can do a high number of these in slow, strict form, pausing and squeezing at the top of chin ups or pausing and holding motionless at the start of squats and push ups, you are not so strong you won’t be challenged by a proper bodyweight workout.

In his column My First Half Century In The Iron Game in Iron Man magazine in 1986 Nautilus inventor Arthur Jones had the following to say about this,

…chins and dips, if properly performed, will stimulate muscular growth in your upper body and arms that will eventually lead to muscular size and strength that is very close to your potential. Adding full squats, eventually leading up to one-legged full squats, and one-legged calf raises, will do much the same thing for your legs and hips. Using this very simple routine, when you get strong enough to perform about ten repetitions of one-armed chins with each arm, your arms will leave very little to be desired.

So, whether you are limited to bodyweight training by location, time, space, budget, or other circumstances, or you prefer it for it’s efficiency and convenience, you don’t have to worry you might be compromising effectiveness.

While the exercises Arthur Jones recommended are a good foundation, and have been the cornerstones of my workouts for a very long time, I would add a few more exercises to round out your workout. Minimally, I like to have people perform six basic movements: a squat, a trunk extension, a vertical push and pull, and a horizontal push and pull. It doesn’t hurt to add a heel raise and timed static contraction neck extension and flexion to round things out, and although they can get worked pretty hard during other exercises some people may want to add a direct exercise for the abdominal muscles. The following is an example of how this could be done with bodyweight only:

1. Hip Raise or Hyperextension
2. Squat
3. Chin Up or Parallel Grip Pull Up
4. Dip or Push Up
5. Inverted Row
6. Pike Push Up or Handstand Push Up
7. Crunch
8. Heel Raise
9. TSC Neck Extension
10. TSC Neck Flexion

A few tips for performance:

• Move slowly and focus on contracting the target muscles continuously throughout the exercise, taking at least four seconds each to perform the positive and negative
• Hold for at least two seconds at the end point of pulling and simple (rotary) movements and at the start point of pushing movements (parallel with the ground for squats, in a slight stretch for dips and push ups, just above the ground for pike and handstand push ups)
• Start, stop, and reverse direction as smoothly as possible, the lower the acceleration the better. Imagine you’re trying to sneak through the turnarounds.
• When you think are unable to continue positive movement in strict form, continue to contract as hard as you can for about five more seconds, just to be sure, but do not loosen your form.
  
• Move quickly between exercises. Once you’ve finished an exercise try to begin the next as soon as possible. If you begin to feel light headed, dizzy, or nauseous and wait for it to pass before continuing, however.
  

Give it a try, and let me know how it goes in the comments below.

Over the past year there have been several arguments in high intensity training circles over whether there is a difference between positive (concentric) and negative (eccentric) strength. Some of these have been semantic arguments about the definition of strength, some attempted to provide alternative explanations for the observed difference during test results, some are still talking about the debunked theory of intramuscular friction. Some of these arguments were part of criticisms of the practice of hyperloading the negative portion of an exercise and equipment designed for this purpose, which will be addressed in a second article.

Negative strength is greater than positive strength.

Strength is the ability of your muscles to produce force. A muscle must produce force to lift a weight. A muscle must produce force to hold a weight motionless. A muscle must produce force to lower a weight more slowly than the acceleration due to gravity (if it didn’t the weight would simply drop). Strength can be positive (concentric contraction, lifting), static (isometric contraction, holding), or negative (eccentric contraction, lowering).

When a muscle contracts concentrically heads on the myosin filaments attach to the actin filaments forming cross-bridges which bend and pull, then release and repeat, causing muscle fibers to shorten. When a muscle contracts isometrically or eccentrically it forms more of these attachments. If the force against the muscle exceeds the force of contraction it begins to lengthen, and as the cross-bridges are stretched forcing detatchment they immediately reattach (approximately two hundred times faster than during concentric contractions). This difference in cross-bridging mechanics makes the motor units significantly stronger when contracting isometrically or eccentrically, so to stop lifting or begin lowering a weight your body recruits fewer motor units in the working muscles to reduce the force produced. Because of this it is less metabolically demanding to hold or lower a certain amount of weight than to lift it.

Another protein in muscle fibers called titin also contributes to the increase in eccentric strength. It is “wound” by the action of the myosin and actin during concentric contractions, then stiffens to resist lengthening during eccentric contractions.

This difference in positive and negative strength is easy to demonstrate. Perform a few strict test repetitions on a good biceps machine or barbell curls until you find a weight that is just slightly too heavy for you to lift. Rest for several minutes (to satisfy those who suspect congestion due to pump and the resulting friction is a contributing factor). Increase this weight by approximately twenty five percent and have someone help you lift it, then hold the movement arm or barbell motionless while they gradually transfer it to you. Although it is too heavy for you to lift you will find you are able to hold it, and lower it slowly under strict control.

While the implications for training will be discussed in more detail in another article there is one important consequence of this I want to mention now. Occasionally a novice trainee will stop exercises short of momentary muscular failure (MMF) because they are afraid they will drop the weight or movement arm and possibly injure themselves. While this concern may be reasonable when performing exercises where grip strength can be a limiting factor it is usually unfounded because of the difference in positive and negative strength (if this difference did not exist you would drop the weight whenever you reached MMF during an exercise).

Even after you have achieved MMF (the inability to continue positive movement in the prescribed form) you will be strong enough to hold the weight motionless for a period of time afterwards and lower it slowly. It is important to teach this to novice trainees to improve their confidence in their safety and willingness to continue to contract intensely as they approach failure when learning high intensity training.

If the advent of Nautilus and high intensity strength training in the 1970’s was a renaissance in exercise, the current rising popularity of so-called “functional training” is a return to the dark ages.

In her recent New York Times article, Fitness Playgrounds Grow As Machines Go, Courtney Rubin writes,

Simple exercises with no-tech equipment (call them paleo or playground exercises, depending on how much fun they are) have long found disciples at niche gyms and in movements such as CrossFit. But in the last year and a half, major health-club chains have begun making hefting sandbags and shaking 25-pound ropes the standard, ditching the fancy weight machines that have dominated gym floors for more than 30 years.

In other words they’re replacing productive, efficient, and safe tools and methods with less productive, inefficient, and riskier ones.

The so-called “functional training” trend is primarily based on the beliefs that exercises must mimic other physical activities like daily living or vocational tasks or sports skills to improve your ability to perform them and that exercises should be performed on unstable surfaces or unilaterally to improve balance and more effectively strengthen your “core” muscles.

These beliefs aren’t just wrong, they are completely backwards.

Your functional ability – how well you are able to perform various physical activities – is determined by several factors. Some of these factors, like your muscular strength, cardiovascular and metabolic conditioning, and flexibility are general; improving them helps you better perform any physical activity. One factor of functional ability, skill, is specific; improving your skill in a particular physical activity only helps you better perform that specific activity.

While the number of possible body movements a person can perform is practically infinite, all of them are just different combinations of a few basic joint movements. Regardless of the specific exercises performed, as long as you strengthen all the muscle groups which produce those joint movements your general ability to perform any movement will improve. For example, it doesn’t matter that the exercise movement performed on a leg extension machine does not resemble some other movement; if your quadriceps are stronger your ability to perform any movement involving knee extension or requiring you to resist knee flexion will improve.

Since the improvements in functional ability from strength gains are general there is no advantage to performing exercises in a manner that mimics other activities. Instead, exercise movements should be based on the requirements for effectively and safely working specific muscles or muscle groups to stimulate increases in strength. This includes both compound (multi-joint, linear) and simple (usually single joint, rotary) or so-called “isolation” exercises. As a corollary, the tools used for exercise should be appropriate for or designed around these movements, and this can include anything from low-tech barbells and dumbbells and basic bodyweight apparatus to high-tech machines.

Attempting to mimic another activity with exercise usually results in inefficient muscular loading and can interfere with the skills of the movement being mimicked (negative skill transfer). Attempting to mimic sport movements involving rapid acceleration during exercise also unnecessarily increases the risk of injury.

If you want to improve your ability to perform a specific movement don’t try to mimic it during exercise; instead learn and practice the movement as you would normally perform it, and if it involves a tool, instrument, or sporting implement practice using that exact tool, instrument, or implement.

Performing an exercise on an unstable surface will improve your skill at performing that specific exercise on that unstable surface but will not improve your skill in other balance tasks. Also, activation of the target muscle groups and the stimulus for strength increases is reduced, not improved, when exercise is performed on an unstable surface. The more focus required to maintain your balance the less you can devote to contraction of the target muscle groups.

Proponents of so-called “functional training” often claim exercise on unstable surface is more effective because it involves more muscles. They fail to distinguish between muscular involvement and efficient loading. Just because a muscle is involved in an exercise in some manner does not mean it is subject to loading sufficient to stimulate significant increases in strength and size. Since maintaining balance requires the center of gravity of the body to be maintained directly over its base the muscles involved in balance work against minimal moment arms, thus minimal resistance and receive little exercise benefit.

As an example of this myth, the article quotes Adam Campbell, fitness director for the Men’s Health brand as saying,

…machines like the leg press strengthen muscles, but asked: “What’s the real logic in sitting or laying down to train your legs?” Functional fitness is “far more bang for your buck” because it works multiple muscles simultaneously, he said, providing better overall strength and mobility, and a higher calorie burn.

Adam Campbell doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

The logic of sitting or laying down to train your legs is these machines allow the target muscles to be loaded more efficiently and more safely than conventional barbell movements, and much more effectively than squatting on a ball like the idiot pictured above. While many so-called “functional” exercises involve more muscle groups than machine exercises or conventional barbell exercises they do so in a manner that loads those muscles haphazardly and inefficiently.

Exercises performed in a manner that efficiently loads the targeted muscles, using equipment designed for this purpose will provide “better overall strength and mobility” than exercises which mimic other movements or involve unstable surfaces or spread the work over a larger number of muscle groups in a way that loads them inefficiently (like exercise “complexes” which combine several different movements into a single exercise).

And, while exercising to burn calories is generally a waste of time, the calories burned during or metabolic demand of an exercise are not determined solely by the amount of muscle involved but also how hard the involved muscles are working.  If you don’t experience a tremendous metabolic demand performing a circuit of machine exercises you aren’t using them correctly.

Later, Josh Bowen, formerly of Urban Active is quoted as saying,

Gyms are way out of the times if all they have is machines.

Bullshit.

A gym with nothing but forty-year-old first and second generation Nautilus machines is way ahead of any gym whose equipment consists mostly of so-called “functional training” staples like stability balls, ropes, medicine balls, truck tires, plyo boxes, and kettlebells.

After a few more paragraphs of ignorant machine bashing the author quotes several people on how odd so-called “functional training” looks to people used to more conventional training. One person is quoted as saying his wife “looks like a circus clown” when doing her “functional” exercises. Another worries people are watching him thinking it’s the dumbest thing they’ve ever seen.

While I have seen and heard about people doing a lot of really dumb things over the years, and so-called “functional training” might not be the dumbest, it is definitely close to the top of the list. It violates motor learning principles, violates principles of safe and efficient muscular loading, and gives people less exercise benefit with more risk. Forget about looking stupid, getting injured because you lose your balance and fall or drop something on yourself is a great way to quickly (and in some cases permanently) reduce your functional ability.

Like the guy who was badly injured when he lost his balance and fell through a plate glass window a few years back because his idiot trainer had him doing dumbbell flys on a stability ball.

Like the college quarterback who is now paralyzed because he broke his back when he lost his balance doing weighted step-ups.

Like the CrossFitter who smashed his foot doing sledgehammer swings.

If you want the greatest possible improvement in general functional ability don’t follow the so-called “functional training” crowd. Work hard, progressively, and consistently on a few basic exercises involving all the major muscle groups. Move slowly during exercises to keep consistent tension on the target muscles and minimize risk of injury, but move quickly between exercises to maximize cardiovascular and metabolic conditioning. Separately from your workouts, learn and practice the correct performance of the specific sport or vocational skills you want to improve at.

And finally, if other people in the gym are doing so-called “functional training” exercises, make sure to give them plenty of clearance so when they do lose their balance or grip and fall, or drop something heavy, or lose control while swinging or throwing something, they don’t reduce your functional ability in the process.