[quote]Wahuuga wrote:
[quote]gregron wrote:
[quote]Vorg wrote:
[quote]gregron wrote:
Can you please tell me what unfunctional strength is?
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Do you think that bench pressing 350+lbs in the gym wont help you when it comes time to push your car if you run out of gas?
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Would totally love to see you ‘bench’ a car forward, without using your legs.[/quote]
Would totally love to see you “squat” a car forward, without using your upper body.
[quote]Wahuuga wrote:
Would totally love to see you ‘bench’ a car forward, without using your legs.[/quote]
I have done this. Car died on a very slight decline right up against the curb. Couldn’t get my body in a position to use my legs at all. Had to almost lie down with my feet braced against a dirt embankment at the end of the sidewalk that was right in front of the parking spot and my legs were completely straight. Front of the car was up against my chest and I pressed it up a very slight incline. After it was away from the curb I was able to get in front of the car and use my legs. And I can’t even bench 350; I can do 315.
You would be amazed at how much the wheel does. It is a remarkable work of physics. How the fuck do you think those WSM dudes pull humongous jets? The amount of weight a free spinning wheel allows you to pull or push compared to what you could do without the object being on wheels is utterly staggering.
And to address the OP, I think “functional strength” as opposed to “bullshit strength” is largely a myth.
What a lot of people are actually thinking of when they think of “functional strength” is actually more along the lines of endurance. No offense meant, but I guarantee you I am a shitload stronger than your construction coworkers. Deadlifting and squatting 400 or 500 or more pounds isn’t something people develop without a lot of time in a gym. And being that strong is functional. Powerlifting gives you tons of back, leg, upper body, and grip strength that you can apply to real world situations.
There is no “feat of strength” that one of your co-workers could perform that a decent powerlifter couldn’t best. Now, I bet they have a lot more endurance than me though. They’re out there doing physically challenging work all day every week. Their workload is probably a good bit higher than mine; I’d get exhausted lol. But that’s different than strength, that is conditioning (nice choice of forum!).
And I think your training ideas are great. Training with odd objects can be very fun and can provide you with some nice conditioning and strength, just not nearly as much strength as weightlifting, functional or otherwise. Strongman competitors do very functional lifts in competition, and they spend quite a lot of time under a heavy barbell.
My above post was one example of “functional” strength application. Here’s a couple more:
Moving a piano out of someone’s house (this one is very straight forward). It was fun being the only guy lifting one side while three dudes struggled with the other side. I’ve never done any piano lifting in the gym.
Here’s a weirder one. I was holding my gay little dog with my right arm, and running up a hill. Shoelace from one foot got caught on the other shoe; went down like a ton of bricks. Shot my left arm out and stopped myself dead without squishing the pup. Someone who hasn’t done so much heavy benching likely would have shattered the crap out of their wrist.
Moving offices at work. Why bother with the hassle of unloading hundreds of documents from a filing cabinet and then having to refile them all once you’ve moved it when you can just pick it up and move it when it’s full?
That’s a big reason why I go to the gym. I love the utility of being strong!
“Functional strength” can really be defined as a lot of things depending on the context of which it is put. In real life “functional strength” is relative to each individuals way of living. I consider myself to be in pretty decent anaerobic and aerobic shape, but if I worked on a construction site for one day I know for a fact that I’m not going to be able to carry as many bags of concrete from one area to another in a given time as a guy who has worked construction for 10 years. I don’t think that it’s because he is in better “condition” than I am but that his body has biomechanically developed in a way, over the last 10 years, that makes it more efficient for him to carry concrete bags.
In the weight room and in all sports in general, “functional strength” is a lot of the same thing. It involves being able to move your body weight in a stable and efficient way so that there is no loss of energy expenditure but being able to move significant amounts of weight in the same manner. How often do you see the guy who can bench press 300+ lbs but can’t do one push up correctly, neck packed, stable core, butt in line with the rest of the body? With that guy it’s usually butt in the air, neck out and belly sagging. Obviously his chest is strong so why can’t he do a push up? Weak core is usually the answer. And by core I don’t just mean abs and obliques. That includes the musculature in the lumbar-thoracic spine area and the glutes.
With that being said, pushing heavy ass weights around in the weight room is always fun, as is carrying heavy ass sandbags and flipping heavy ass tires (correctly).
[quote]csulli wrote:
And to address the OP, I think “functional strength” as opposed to “bullshit strength” is largely a myth.
There is no “feat of strength” that one of your co-workers could perform that a decent powerlifter couldn’t best. [/quote]
I disagree. Unless this powerlifter has a day job in construction there just might be somethings his co-worker can do that the powerlifter can’t…
This goes back to the definition of functional strength. It’s too broad a term. It’s highly dependent on the function you are doing. It requires skill and muscle coordination like throwing. Being a bodybuilder is not going to make you the person that can automatically throw the furthest. This is much the reason why they can always add an event to strongman and crossfit that some champion might come in 4th or 5th place in.
As to the OP your construction friends perform their job for 40 hours a week. Are you trying to replicate this in 10? The closes way I see would be a bodybuildiing program if you are going for looks or powerlifting if your going for strength. If your hell bent on unconventional which is fine I think there are some programs out there for that too. If not you should still choose some form of powerlifting or bodybuilding and learn the principals first.
[quote]gregron wrote:
[quote]Vorg wrote:
As for the type of work I do, it is typically full-body focusing on developing functional strength…[/quote]
Can you please tell me what unfunctional strength is?
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Oh, this thread again? lol
Actually, I’ll post something potentially constructive. You said your focus is on athleticism. You also mentioned gymnastics… as well as sprinting… and some other stuff.
Anyway, I think the best way to achieve a goal like this is to define it more succinctly. Just saying you want to be ‘athletic’ is pretty broad. Why not pick a particular type of athlete (a gymnast OR a sprinter OR whatever you want to be/look like) and find out what they do.
FTR, gymasts, sprinters, and athletes in EVERY sport incorporate traditional strength training along with their ‘unconvential’ training. Food for thought.
[quote]Wahuuga wrote:
[quote]gregron wrote:
[quote]Vorg wrote:
[quote]gregron wrote:
Can you please tell me what unfunctional strength is?
[/quote]
Do you think that bench pressing 350+lbs in the gym wont help you when it comes time to push your car if you run out of gas?
[/quote]
Would totally love to see you ‘bench’ a car forward, without using your legs.[/quote]
Didn’t gregron say benching 350+ would help (not that benching is EXACTLY the same movement)? Did I miss the part where he said not to use your legs?
Beyond those two questions, you’re obviously missing the point. He’s saying traditional gym lifts help with real world situations requiring strength. If you weren’t so tarded, you would have realized that your ‘dur dur dur what about legs!?!?!?!’ conundrum can be solved by squats. QED. I’m sure gregron assumed you could figure that out. Apparently he was wrong.
Construction work gets people strong because they do it all the time for many years. Like those Sherpas or w/e who have massive lats because they’ve been doing the same lat centric exercise since they were 5.
If you want to look like a gymnast join a gymnastics club!!! Anyways gymnasts only get that big from doing it ALL THE TIME, I know an ex gymnast who used to compete in international competitions and he trained like 10-15 hours a week. And in conventional strength/wrestling stuff he wasn’t even stronger than me - when I could only bench and deadlift 90 and 140kg respectively.
To be honest the best way to be an all round ATHLETE is to do a load of sports! Plus a reasonable weight training program.
I think the whole functional strength thing is BS. So many people say ‘I wanna train like a boxer, I wanna be as fit as a rugby player’ - but without making the commitment to actually do the bloody sport for a couple of years.