Monday, May 17, 2010

Drago 6 and his warm up.


This is Drago.  Those are his kettlebells.  He claims this is a full bodied functional movement due to the wide sumo stance and the lip curl.  I agree, simple as that.

Functional!  Buzz Word!  So what is a functional movement?  Bossu Balls and leg curls?  Pull ups and push ups? Here is one definition: Blam!  Most of the movements we perform in the gym are "functional" if we all agree with the above mentioned definition.  However, I have heard some folks describe functional movement as, "movement you do every day."  As Americans we totally use tons of functional movement every day right?

Nope.  

My Dad always jokes "... Steve its hard to walk from that air conditioned car 30 feet to my air conditioned office."  ITS SO TRUE THOUGH!  If you work in the Office Space world you mostly likely have the liberty to walk from your parking space, to the elevator, to your cube, out for lunch, back to the cube, then back to the parking space and then home.  Not a lot of opportunity to perform functionally huh?  

It is so important for people of all ages to perform multi-joint, multi planar movements.  That is why we will always rely on four basic movements that have been around since the stone age: Squat, Press, and Dead Lift.  Can you stand up and sit down by yourself?  Can you do it under load?  Can you press something over your head?  Can you pick something up off the ground?  Can you do it correctly?  The better you are at the basics, the more functional you can be!  

So basics huh?  Here is a basic: walking.  Is walking functional?  Yup.  But walking on a treadmill and listening to Taylor Swift on your red iPod, while watching Oprah as the the central AC blows a perfect 70 degrees... in my opinion... is not functional exercise.  Its not exercise at all in my opinion.  Is it something?  Yeah.  Is something better than nothing?  Yeah.  Lets go walking Mississippi?!  You bet'cha.  But there are some many other things out there that are better than the treadmill (vs strength and conditioning).   Why settle?  While you are walking in the AC and feeling great about yourself, the average woman in a developing country walks 4 MILES for water...on a daily basis.  Whats the difference?  Necessity.  We must understand that what we do at the gym on a daily basis needs to be a necessity.

Forget about losing weight, looking good, being sexy or ripped like rambo... who cares about any of that if you can't bend over and pick up a peanut.

Workout: 5 rounds of
400m
30 wallball
30 box jump

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