What is the Difference Between Sport-Specific Training, Strength & Conditioning, and Functional Training?
There has been a constant struggle in the sports world to truly define sport-specific training versus the term functional training. Bottom line, sport-specific training happens on a court/field. Strength and conditioning is meant to serve the purpose for that specific sport. Functional training is used in regard to general sports training, where we look at the commonalities of sport and similar movement patterns and train them.
What Does Functional Training Include?
Below are things to think about when training for sport that make a lot of sense in terms of carry over from training to performance. Most of us know these, but when we really think about them and compare them to our training model, we may see some discrepancies.
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Few Sports are Played Sitting Down
Only a few sports, i.e. rowing, are performed sitting down. This means that training muscles from a seated position isn’t functional for most sports.
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Few Sports are Played Where Outside Sources Provide Stability.
All sports have reactive components, and require athletes to absorb load/force with no outside stability. An athlete has to be able to create the stability internally to accept force and then redistribute it wherever it needs to go, whether that be throwing, kicking or cutting and sprinting. What does this mean? Machine based training isn’t functional, the machine is stabilizing the load. Free weights are more functional in that they allow an athlete’s body to provide stability and respond to input, ultimately decreasing their injury risk.
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No Sport Skill is One Joint Acting in Isolation
Our focus should be on multi-joint movement as much as possible, to create strength and power that translates to the needs of sport.
How Should I Incorporate Functional Training?
Ideally, an athlete is using free weights as much as possible, doing compound movement patterns that involve more than just one joint and doing exercises in positions that are challenging the body’s stability. Functional training prepares an athlete to play their sport, it improves performance and decreases injury risk, teaches athletes how to handle their body weight and incorporates balance and proprioception through the use of single side exercises.
Your training should encompass all of these pillars, and then sport-specific cardiovascular training added on as well. Make sure you are spending your training time efficiently! By decreasing your injury risk, you become the best prepared athlete on the field/court!
