Issue 089

June 2012

Don’t waste your time with bad technique and non-functional exercise that has no pay-off in the cage. Rethink and become a better athlete.

It’s imperative when getting in shape for mixed martial arts that you use exercises, mechanics and motions you will actually perform in the cage – this is functional training. The closer exercises resemble mixed martial arts movements the better the strength gained from those exercises, and the time spent doing them, will carry over into your fight. Performing these workouts with great form is more important still. Below, Michael Boyle – strength and conditioning coach at Boston University for 15 years, the strength and conditioning coach to the NHL’s Boston Bruins for eight years and also the S&C man for gold medal US women’s Olympic ice hockey team at Nagano 98 – explains why the concepts of functional training are critical to becoming a better athlete.

CHOOSING FUNCTIONAL EXERCISES

We’d like to assume coaches are always looking for the best programs and exercises to both reduce the incidence of injury and improve performance. However, when I see the programs many elite athletes are given, I am both confused and disappointed.

Coaches continue to prescribe exercises like leg extensions, leg curls and leg presses, even when it appears there is little to support the prescriptions. Functional anatomy is not a theory. What we know about function is factual and is based on science and research.

The idea that we need to isolate a muscle or that we need certain single-joint exercises for injury prevention has not been proven. Coaches need to move forward in their programming and begin to use exercises that make sense and will actually reduce the potential of injury.

TECHNIQUE

Technique, technique, technique. Never compromise when performing functional exercise. Use body weight when possible and practical. Do lots of push-ups, feet-elevated push-ups, one-leg squats, chin-ups and dips. Body weight exercises are humbling. Use these early and often as a beginner. Not only will you learn to respect your body weight, but you will also see the value of these easy exercises.

If you are going to use the squat in your strength and conditioning program, use body weight squats first. If you can’t squat body weight with perfect form, you can’t squat. Period. You must be able to get through the range of motion. It is normal to be able to squat to a parallel position. Athletes who cannot may need work on hip mobility, ankle mobility or lateral hamstring stretching.

If you choose to squat, perform parallel squats without fail. My athletes do nothing but front squats to a femur-parallel position. I even use 12-inch plyo boxes to ensure depth; I ask athletes to squat to a box that places the femur parallel to the floor. Although I may need different size boxes for different athletes, I arrive at a point for each athlete that defines parallel. These are not ‘Westside Barbell’ box squats; the athlete merely touches the box to ensure depth.

If you use the bench press, no bounce, no arch. Never compromise. Remember why you cheat: to lift more weight. Lifting more weight feeds your ego. Once you allow it to happen, cheating is very difficult to stop.

To make your point, use exercises like pause bench and pause front squats. These exercises can be very humbling. Canadian strength coach Charles Poliquin has a principle called technical failure. Technical failure means you never count a rep after technique breaks down. This principle will encourage you to lift properly. I consistently tell my athletes I don’t care how many reps they do; I care how many good reps they do.

USING FUNCTIONAL EXERCISES

One interesting thing about functional exercise is it makes some old-school coaches nervous. Opponents of the concept of functional training are consistently trotting out poorly done studies to call functional training a fad. Recently I was told functional exercise is fine for rehab and will help restore proprioception, but it doesn’t work with healthy athletes. My experience does not bear this out: in six years of professional or Olympic-level soccer, my athletes had no ACL tears – a common ailment in mixed martial arts. This is obviously anecdotal, but powerful nonetheless.

The concepts described in the functional continuum (use to illustrate exercise choices on a continuum from least functional to most functional) can be applied to any region of the body. To use an overused cliché, think outside the box. Don’t do what you’ve always done. Don’t do what everyone else does. Don’t copy powerlifters or weightlifters; they are training for their sports, not yours. Many of the concepts of powerlifting or Olympic-style lifting can be applied to a sound strength program, but remember those sports are different because in our other activities we infrequently have two feet in contact with the ground at every moment. You don’t have to take exercises like squats or dead lifts out of your program, but instead complement them with assistance exercises higher on the functional continuum.

3 FUNCTIONAL TRAINING EXERCISES

• Instead of leg extensions, use split squats or another single-leg squat variation. Split squats incorporate balance, flexibility and single-leg strength.
• Instead of leg curls, use a single-leg straight-leg dead lift. The hamstring is more of a hip extensor than a knee flexor. Leg curls do not provide useful, real-world strength.
• Instead of dumbbell bench press, try an alternating dumbbell bench press where you stabilize the dumbbell at the top. This will develop core strength, shoulder stability and single-arm strength.

When choosing exercises, ask yourself why each is in the program. If the reason is because everyone else does them or because that’s the way you have always done it, think again.

The functionality of an exercise should be a key factor in choosing exercises for athletic development. Functional exercises will, by definition, be specific to a sport or activity. Progression from double-leg to single-leg exercises is important to most ground-based sports.