Functional vs.Traditional Strength Training for Young Athletes

Today’s sedentary lifestyle among children and youth has resulted in a decline in motor abilities, including strength. From personal experience, I know that just because a child is involved in sports doesn’t necessarily mean they are strong—strong enough to withstand all the physical demands on the sports field. This particularly applies to the musculature of the core, which should ensure proper posture as well as the necessary stability of the spine during various sports movements, both during training and in games or competitions.

If you, as a coach of young athletes, have also noticed a lack of strength in the young athletes you train, you have surely asked yourself about the type of training (or exercises) that would simultaneously strengthen the musculature and improve their sports performance.

Below is an overview of one such strength training session (for each exercise perform 2 sets of 12 repetitions):

Dumbbell Bench Press on Stability Ball

Bosu Ball Push Up

Split-Stance Cable Fly

Bent over Dumbbell Row (While balancing with Single Leg on Bosu Ball)

Single Leg Dumbbell Cobra (While balancing with Single Leg on Bosu Ball)

Roman Extension on Stability Ball (physical therapy ball). [1]

Many may find these exercises unusual and the loads too light to achieve strength gains in young athletes. Therefore, they might prefer traditional strength training on fitness machines combined with lifting heavier weights.

It is undeniable that traditional training on fitness machines and lifting heavy weights results in increased muscle mass. However, traditional fitness training on machines will not provide what most children and youth lack today—the ability to stabilize the core during fast and explosive sports movements, the ability to effectively perform unilateral movements, and the resilience to muscle and tendon injuries. This means that with such strength training, the problems we see daily in young athletes are not solved: ineffective movement on the sports field, back pain, and sports injuries.

Why is this so? Because machine training primarily involves isolated muscle exercises with a stabilized spine and predefined force direction and strength (movements occur in one plane), as well as limited range of motion. Since none of this is characteristic of activities on the sports field, this type of strength training will not contribute to the transformation process.

Children and youth spend most of their day in a sitting or lying position, which weakens their core. Therefore, the first task of a youth sports coach should be to strengthen the core (abdomen, back, and hips), which consists of a larger number of muscles that can only ensure spinal stability when working together.

Crunches are probably the most common exercise for strengthening the core. However, the real effect of this exercise on improving spinal stabilization during sports movements is highly questionable. But the excessive pressure created on the spinal discs during the exercise is more than certain, especially if the legs are extended during the exercise. For this reason, I never asked young athletes to do crunches during my integral conditioning programs. I knew that, unfortunately, they would perform more than enough repetitions of them during their regular sports training.

If you observe an athlete’s movement during a game or competition, you will notice that acceleration, deceleration, changes in speed and direction,  jumps and landings characterize movements in all three planes; unilateral load; and constantly changing force direction and magnitude. Therefore, to improve the efficiency of movement on the field, strength training must include exercises that engage multiple muscles, with the body not being stabilized (as is the case when working on fitness machines). In other words, exercises should ensure movement in multiple planes, stabilization in multiple planes, and unilateral movements. We aim to train movements, not isolated muscles.

Functional exercises are strength exercises that focus on training movement patterns. In these exercises, spine stability is achieved through the coordinated activation of many muscles, rather than relying on any one muscle to produce maximum force. Lifting heavy weights during these exercises can actually reduce their effectiveness because it can interfere with the body's ability to stabilize the spine properly.

Functional strength training will ensure better sports performance because, in addition to strength, balance and proprioception are improved. By training movement, we evenly develop numerous muscles, which means that the likelihood of uneven development of agonists and antagonists is significantly reduced. In this way, this method of training also provides the best prevention of sports injuries.

Traditional vs. functional. The decision is yours.

Oh, I almost forgot. 

The strength training outlined at the beginning of our blog should be complemented with 1 hour of skateboarding to match the “original”.

Such a “not_too_heavy_load” workout could easily lead to the wrong conclusion—that it is not designed for a serious athlete. 

Quite the opposite.

This was a summer workout regularly used by Steve Nash, the Canadian basketball player who was twice named the NBA MVP (Most Valuable Player).

Proof that efficiency on the field does not require fitness machines, heavy weights, or the motto "no pain, no gain." All it takes is a bit of common sense and a lot of imagination.

-Igor Macner, author of books Formula for Success in Sports 1 and 2

[1] Steve Nash’s Sample Summer Workout Routine
Jeramie McPeek
November 14, 2007