The Wide-Ranging Benefits of Building Muscle
Muscle is Functional
…but your functional workout is a joke
It seems like with the rise of “functional” training the idea of gaining muscle or trying to look better became a silly idea, or at least one many people won’t cop to. What are your goals? You know, to be more functional. No, I don’t know. I’ve been a strength and conditioning specialist for over a decade and this trendy buzzword admittedly means nothing to me in that context.
Replacing the classic muscle-building moves was functional movement. Sorry for the dumb question but since when is building muscle not functional? I must have missed something. Are you losing weight? Are you getting stronger? Are you getting bigger? These were the primary means to measure whether a program was “working” or not but it seems that these questions have been replaced by a different question- Is it functional?
With the rise of “functional” training, it seems like people have gotten embarrassed to say the real reason why they actually begin training. The vast majority of people begin training because they simply want to look better. “Is that functional?” has become a retort to anyone who spends time focusing on building their aesthetics in the gym. Well, I’ve got news for all you “functional” bros out there…YES. It is. Building muscle is functional. Certainly more so than curls on a stability ball ever will be!
Whatever happened to training to get build muscle and improve aesthetics? Truth be told it wasn’t ever exclusively my goal but as a trainer, it was something that was always relevant to my clients, especially the guys. It was equally important to the girls they just usually didn’t know they needed to build muscle so that normally took some convincing. It was also something that was always in my mind even while training for sports and athletic endeavors. I also wanted to look like I worked out if we’re being honest. Who doesn’t? So how come no one says it anymore? In so many of my consultation sessions these days aesthetics are halfheartedly invoked after spewing a bunch of fitness industry jargon at me that I’m supposed to understand because I’m the trainer.
What is “functional” training anyway? It has become a broad and meaningless catchall used to sell a new generation of fitness products, but if we read Wikipedia’s definition it is “training that attempts to adapt or develop exercises which allow individuals to perform the activities of daily life more easily and without injury.” Obviously from this, one could justify pretty much any exercise as functional, so why then are the classic muscle-building exercises and techniques blasted as “not functional” to so many today? If I program a barbell back squat is that somehow not functional? It doesn’t use a physioball or add resistance to a mimicked athletic pattern so for most people, not functional. Believe it or not, the barbell back squat is one of the most functional exercises ever created and all that crap most influencers keep posting on social media is a sad mockery of functional training.
What passes for “functional” training is a bit of a joke. For most people, this kind of training is synonymous with “sport-specific” or unique movements performed with weights. However, there is noting sport-specific about moving around with weights unless those movements are the big three and you are a power-lifter. The best movements for developing real athletes happen to be an intelligently designed program consisting of traditional movements with the highest amount of carry-over. Turning the weight-room into a wannabe Ninja Warrior course is neither functional or sport-specific, especially if you aren’t a Ninja Warrior.
Most people aren’t actually Ninja Warriors or aspiring athletes. Most real people in gyms across the world aren’t athletes at all. It’s become trendy to call every client an athlete but repeating it, again and again, hasn’t made it true. The simple truth is most people are not preparing for a competition, they are trying to get fitter for their life. This has proven to be an effective way to market and sell fitness products, but from my standpoint, it has been a terrible way to communicate the principles being applied in training.
The way most people will measure progress is largely based on how they look and feel, now how much better they have gotten at an unstable wood chop variation. Most people that trainers are forcing into these movements just want to look good in a t-shirt or possibly see their abs for once, basic variations of classic movements will get people there a whole lot faster than their “functional” counterparts. If that is you, then do not let the “functional” bros shame you out of training to build muscle or aesthetics. In a number of ways and for most people, building muscle is functional training, hence no air quotes needed for once. If functional training is designed to make one better at the activities of daily life and prevent injury, then building muscle is always functional.
Building muscle comes with a number of benefits that I will argue are the most important functions of training. To start, building muscle speeds the metabolism. When most people start on a fat-loss program, their go-to is to increase cardio and decrease calories. This will work, for a time, but in the long run, it is actually going to predispose one to more weight gain. Why? Metabolic adaptation. The body will adapt to this by decreasing metabolic rate and it will get increasingly more difficult to make progress after a few weeks of initial gains. This sends people into a downward spiral of working harder and harder in their workouts while eating less and less in their meals all in order to maintain or get a little bit worse.
Strength training will cause the opposite to happen. Building muscle will increase your metabolic rate. The more muscle one builds, the more calories he can eat. The first step towards lasting fat-loss is thus to add muscle. Spending the first few weeks of your fat-loss journey packing on a few pounds of muscle will set the stage for consistent and long-term success. Fat-loss is hands down the most common goal I encounter as a personal trainer, and building muscle is incredibly functional for all of my clients with this goal.
Endocrine function is another capacity that can be directly improved through strength training. The single most important factor determining how one looks is hormones. It is our hormones that tell our body how and where to store fat in addition to countless other regulatory functions they influence. Remember when you were a teenager? We all talk about that time when we could eat whatever we want and not worry about gaining a pound. What’s the difference between you now and your teenage self who never worried about counting calories or macronutrient ratios? It’s your hormones. When you were younger testosterone and growth hormone, the anabolic hormones, were much higher. That explains why we could eat whatever we wanted without wearing it on our stomach.
The truth is you will never get those teenage hormones back. That’s gone, father time remains undefeated. However, the decrease in anabolic hormones as we age is, to be honest, quite a bit overblown. This has become a pet excuse for many. They know that their hormones are in decline and resign to not being able to reach their fitness goals because of their hormones. This is bull shit on a couple of levels. First, the decreases in hormones are by very small factors and these decreases are not the result of aging but of behavior changes as we age. Laziness and inactivity, not natural declines in hormones explain the precipitous drops that most experience. You may also remember that you were much more active when you were younger. I’ve been reminded of this watching my 18-month-old play on the playground, we all used to be in constant motion, and now we sit all day. People wildly underestimate how sedentary they become as adults just in comparison to a younger version of themselves. It simply isn’t only age that contributed to the decline in anabolic hormones, the vast majority is explained by behavior. As people age, they tend to become less active too. That’s the main reason most people’s hormones barely resemble the younger version.
The best way to counter the natural decline of anabolic hormones is to stay active. Even better and more specifically, stay active in the form of lifting weights. Those who stay active and strength train will not experience sharp declines in these hormones. That’s because strength training is the most efficient way to increase anabolic hormones without an injection. Sending the signal to build muscle via strength training will render one of the most popular excuses irrelevant.
Our hormones affect not only how we look, but also how we feel. This is perhaps why in studies strength training is showing positive results treating mood disorders and improving mental health. Full disclosure, the author of this post, yours truly, has been prescribed a wide array of anti-depressants from SSRIs to Trazadone just to name a few. Currently, he takes none of them but has what some might describe as a religious workout regiment. That is not by accident. This is purely anecdotal and should not substitute for medical advice, but take it as food for thought. I found that I was able to more effectively manage my moods and mental health through physical activity than any other means presented to me. Years before I ever read a single study on the correlation between strength training and reductions in symptoms of depression, I decided to stop taking my medications as I became regimented and consistent in the gym. That was never the goal, it’s just something that happened organically over time. I’m not special, and there may be many more people who will find this to also be true for them.
Let me be clear, I am not advising that anyone stop taking their medications and replace it with exercise without consulting the relevant practitioners. However, I am suggesting that increasing exercise very well may reduce many symptoms and many people will find they can drastically alter their relationship to prescription drugs via exercise. That is not just me saying it. A recent review of the scientific literature on exercise and anti-depressants showed exercise to be just as effective at reducing symptoms of depression. Added bonus, exercise does not come with any negative side-effects. Unlike anti-depressants, it is effective in all populations as some do not respond to certain medications. Lastly, a significant portion of those reporting positive impacts from anti-depressants is doing so via the placebo effect. While exercise does not supersede speaking to a professional, it is the most logical place to start and does not really require any professional oversight or regulation.
No matter what your goal is, building some muscle will make it easier. The most effective way to build muscle is not through “functional” training. Seeing what now flies under the label it is clear that is has completely jumped the shark and become a useless term like when you read “natural” on a food label. Drives sales, means nothing. Focusing on variations of deadlifts, squats, presses, rows, and loaded carries may not look like the “functional training” you see on Instagram, but in reality, these are the most functional lifts known to man. You don’t even need a BOSU ball to make the functional, they already are.
The main reason I wrote this is that I’ve noticed my initial consultations with new clients change. What’s your goal? used to be a straight forward question. I want to get more functional. WTF?? Now it is rife with the buzzwords my industry has sold to a generation. The goal to build muscle isn’t vain or stupid like so many now make it out to be, it is one of the most practical and useful means one could use for a wide array of fitness goals.
Want to look better, move better, feel better, lose fat, gain muscle or live longer and with a higher quality of life? Building muscle with the basic lifts is one of the most direct ways to bring about any one of these outcomes. Is that functional? I’ll say it again, YES, it is. Don’t @ me functional bros. One day you might want to quit commenting on other people’s progress and make some of your own. If that day comes, you’ll probably want to hop off that medicine ball and start training to gain some muscle yourself! Nothing is more functional.
