Functional Path Training: Do You Get It

Functional Path Training

The Functional Path is a path that had been traveled many times before but had fallen out of use in favor of smoother paved roads that promised faster and easier results. Seeking to follow and better define the functional path is a continuing journey, fortunately it is a journey that many have traveled before. Functional Path training is getting back to the basics of movement. It is learning to tune into the body and it’s inherent wisdom to produce rhythmic flowing movement.

7/25/07

Do You Get It

For the person that wrote in to say they were proud to be a muscle head, I am glad you are proud to be a muscle head. If you take the muscle head approach I would like to play your team everyday of the week! Some of the comments on my recent post have been almost absurd and in some ways surreal. Men, women, boys and girls it is not just about strength. It does not matter that Olympic lifters are the strongest athletes in the word,that is their world and their sport. Someone asked what is soccer strong? Soccer strong is the ability to hold off an opponent, win the 50/50 ball and win balls in the air. It has very little or nothing to do with how much you can clean. Strength is only one biomotor quality. And it interacts with all the other biomotor qualities to produce athletic performance. Whether or not people want to admit it there are injuries whose genesis is in the weight room. I am making a plea for sanity. It is really hard for me to believe that in 2007 with everything we know from sport science and good practice that all of this is still an issue.

2 Comments:

At 7/25/07, 9:46 AM, Anonymous said...: Let's not forget that the qualities of "soccer strong" also require sport skill and desire of which desire may be the most important. I will take sport strong over sport skill much of the time. When an athlete has all 3 it is truly a beautiful thing to watch.
At 7/26/07, 10:47 AM, Anonymous said...: Vern-
I am right with you. Some of the comments about olympic lifting and their place in preparing a soccer player are totally absurd. It scares me to think that some of these people would be training soccer players. It is the same mentality that caused injury to the girl who injured her back when the university strength coach had her doing 1-rep max's.
I have heard several college soccer coaches in my area complain about this exact problem - their players being injured by too much time with the strength coach in the weight room (and worse doing olympic lifts the majority of the time in there).
As you said, I would hope sport science would resolve this issue. One would think that common sense alone would resolve it.

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About Me

Name: Vern Gambetta

Location: Florida, United States

Vern is currently is the Director of Gambetta Sports Training Systems. He has been the a conditioning coach for several teams in Major League Soccer as well as the conditioning consultant to the US Men’s World Cup Soccer team. Vern is the former Director of Conditioning for the Chicago White Sox and Director of Athletic Development for the New York Mets. Vern is recognized internationally as an expert in training and conditioning for sport having worked with world class athletes and teams in a wide variety of sports. He is a popular speaker and writer on conditioning topics having lectured and conducted clinics in Canada, Japan, Australia and Europe. Vern's coaching experience spans 36 years at all levels of competition. Vern has authored six books and over one hundred articles related to coaching and sport performance in a variety of sports. He received his BA from Fresno State University and his teaching credential with a coaching minor from University of California Santa Barbara. Vern obtained his MA in Education with an emphasis in physical education from Stanford University.

Functional Path Training

7/25/07

Do You Get It

2 Comments:

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