How can functional training help aging athletes avoid common injuries?

1 What is functional training?

Functional training is a type of exercise that focuses on training your body to perform everyday movements with ease, efficiency, and safety. It involves using multiple muscle groups, joints, and planes of motion to mimic the actions you do in your daily life, such as squatting, lunging, pushing, pulling, twisting, and balancing. Functional training can improve your strength, power, endurance, coordination, agility, flexibility, and stability.

2 Why is functional training important for aging athletes?

As you age, your body undergoes several physiological changes that can affect your functional ability and increase your risk of injury, such as a loss of muscle mass and strength, decreased bone density and joint health, reduced cardiovascular and respiratory capacity, impaired balance and proprioception, slowed reaction time and motor control, and increased inflammation and oxidative stress. Functional training can help you counteract these changes by stimulating your muscles, bones, joints, heart, lungs, brain, and nervous system. This type of training can enhance your adaptability, resilience, and efficiency while also helping to prevent or manage common injuries that affect aging athletes like low back pain, knee pain, shoulder pain, hip pain, neck pain, ankle sprains, and muscle strains. By challenging your body in various ways through functional training you can help maintain a healthy lifestyle.

3 How to design a functional training program?

Creating an effective functional training program should be tailored to your individual needs, goals, and abilities. However, there are some general principles you can follow to design a well-rounded routine. Start with a warm-up that includes dynamic stretches, mobility exercises, and activation drills. Then choose exercises that target the major muscle groups and movement patterns you need in your sport or activity. Additionally, use a variety of equipment such as dumbbells, kettlebells, resistance bands, medicine balls, stability balls, and TRX straps to add challenge and variety. You can also perform exercises on unstable surfaces like a BOSU ball or balance board to improve your core stability and balance. Adjust the intensity, volume, frequency, and duration of your workouts according to your fitness level and recovery status. Aim for at least two to three functional training sessions per week with at least one day of rest between each session. Keep your workouts between 30 to 60 minutes long and finish with a cool-down that includes static stretches, foam rolling, and breathing exercises.

4 How to measure your progress and results?

Functional training can help you improve your performance and functionality in your sport or activity, so tracking how you feel and perform is the best way to measure your progress. You can monitor your speed, power, endurance, range of motion, balance, coordination, pain, energy, mood, and confidence. Additionally, objective measures such as body weight and composition, strength and resistance levels, repetitions and sets, heart rate and blood pressure, and functional movement screen can also be used.

5 How to avoid overtraining and injury?

Functional training can help you prevent common injuries, but it can also cause overtraining and injury if done too much, too soon, or too hard. To avoid these pitfalls, it's important to listen to your body and respect your limits. If you feel pain, fatigue, or discomfort, stop or modify your exercise. Additionally, follow the principle of progressive overload by increasing intensity, volume, frequency, or duration gradually and systematically. Vary your workouts and include recovery days with low-impact activities such as walking, swimming, yoga, or meditation. Lastly, seek professional guidance and feedback from a certified functional trainer or physical therapist to design, implement, and evaluate your program. Regular check-ups and assessments are also necessary to monitor your health and performance.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?