These techniques are important because during sports, the body
experiences multiple forces in many different planes of movement.
Movement in different planes of motion involves the joints of the
body moving in various directions all at one time. Training the
body in this fashion will teach the joints to absorb the multiple
forces that it encounters during the athlete's activity. It is more
beneficial to train the movements and joints together rather than
one individual muscle or joint at a time.
To understand how functional training works, consider an analogy
of our body to a team.
If we coached each individual member of a team separately in practice
and taught them their jobs one on one. When we put them together
for the first time in the game, would they be successful?
This is basically what we are doing when we are just using weight
training for preparation. We are taking each individual muscle and
isolating them. When we perform during game time or practice we
are throwing the muscles together and expecting them to work as
a team. Like the team that does not practice together, the muscles
that do not train together have a higher propensity to poor performance.
This is why we can have failure when we do not prepare muscle groups
for sport specific movements. Failure in this game could be a season
ending injury. That is a bigger deal than a mark in the loss column
and could be something you deal with your entire life.
We are not saying that weight training is not needed. It is an
important part of the training process. However, it is not the complete
formula for success.
Why
is this important?