Molly Toner

The word ‘functional’ is one of the most widely used words in the health and fitness industry, whilst simultaneously being one of the most misused and misunderstood words in the industry and so often thrown about by trainers to stand-out and promote their training program. In this post, I will explain the true use of the word ‘functional’ in fitness, what is functional flexibility and what happens when the body doesn’t have the required functional flexibility to complete a movement task.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines function as ‘an activity that is natural to or the purpose of a person or thing.’ When we look at functional it is defined as, ‘relating to a function, designed to be practical and useful, and working or operating.’ Therefore, everyday function in the human body is the ability to perform tasks of daily living such as getting out of bed, walking up and down the stairs, getting dressed etc. This definition can also be used interchangeably with the word mobility – our movement ability. 

When we apply functional to fitness and training, we can define it as training which serves a purpose. Put simply, functional flexibility means having the required range of motion to perform whatever task that person wants to do. Functional flexibility will be different to every person depending on what you are training for and a ‘functional training program’ can never be a one-size-fits-all program. For example, a ballerina looking to hold her leg higher in an arabesque will require a different functional training program to an olympic weight lifter looking deadlift heavier. 

Your body loves to conserve energy and it will always try to find the easiest way of doing something though the path of least resistance. When we don’t have functional flexibility, we go on to develop compensatory flexibility. This means when the body doesn’t have the required range of motion in the area of the body typically used to complete a movement task, it will recruit range of motion from other areas of the body to complete the movement task instead.