Breaking it Down

Last Thursday I went to the Gainesville Health and Fitness Center (which, to my surprise, was harder to find a parking spot at than on campus—apparently everyone in Gainesville is a gym rat) to listen to a couple of presentations by personal trainers Renada and Eric. As soon as Renada got up to speak, I couldn't help but smile when she started talking about functional training--the very term Matt Herring, the UF men's basketball strength and conditioning coordinator, had expressed a strong dislike for the previous week.

Renada, a former UF swimmer, cut an impressive figure, and, since I was near the front, I decided I'd better listen attentively to what she had to say. I have to admit, it was pretty interesting. She told us that you can break down all movement into six patterns: squatting, lunging, pulling, pushing, twisting and bending. I didn't give it much thought at first, but on the way home from the gym the wheels began to turn. Of all the amazing things the human body can do, there is no way you can simply put all movement into six categories.

I started to pay attention to the way my body moved during everyday activities, determined to find a flaw in the simple categorization; I couldn't. Then I thought, what about contortionists? After watching half an hour of my friend's Cirque du Soleil tape, Renada's statement still held (granted there was some extreme bending and twisting). Finally, I came to the conclusion that these six seemingly simple patterns are the basis for all movement. This made the once nebulous concept of functional training much simpler for me.

Like Matt and Renada said, functional movement doesn't have to be some crazy, uber-complicated exercise; it's simply requires applying these six motions while working out. My new found appreciation of the simplicity of movement has motivated me to dust off my hand weights--we'll see how long this newfound motivation lasts.