Do You Need Functional Training and What Is Functional Training?
What's your daily routine or daily living activities? Do you need some balance and stability in your life?
0:01 Hey Si Boarders! It’s Elysia, and I’m at the shop doing some production mode. Doing one of my favorite things: gripping Si Boards. Oh yeah!
0:15 So if you know me, you know I’m always talking about stability and balance, and postural endurance… Why we need all that, why do I keep talking about that? Well, for me, all of those moves are really functional to what I am doing in my daily living, and for athletes and for everyone else doing daily living activities.
0:37 This big Commando board. I love it! So when I’m in production mode, I am constantly moving, and especially gripping these big boards. I am reaching out, and I need to have really good postural endurance to make sure that I’m going be able to last the entire day gripping these boards. There’s times where I’m really leaning to the side with assembly. There’s times where I’m also leaning and moving over when I’m silk screening.
1:10 I’m always in a split stance as well because it’s more efficient that just standing upright and using your back to bend over. So I’m always weight shifting, and if you see me, I do a lot of lunge moves on the boards with the half balls, and that helps simulate what I’m doing here. Making sure that I weight shift forward, have balance, and also have postural stability to maintain having my arm out for a long, long day of gripping your boards.
1:41 So for me, functional training really involves a lot of balance and stability, and if you imagine any other professions where you’re doing a lot of manual labor, like landscaping or construction work, or working on the road crews or painters. They are so active. They are quite fit to be able to last day in and day out, doing a lot of manual labor work like that.
2:10 But even athletes need a really great balance between your power, your agility, your strength, your stability moves to be able to last through the entire game, and even into overtime. Are you going to be strong, well into overtime to help resist and prevent injury?
2:28 So for a lot of my athletes, they’re on the field, and they’re just tremendously skillful. Powerful and strong. However, when they used to see me, as I was their athletic trainer, they were lacking that stability portion, and so, that’s what would happen when they were injured.
2:46 So I would focus on the stability portion, and then gradually get them back into the power and the strength. And for me, that upper body stability is so important for me to protect my back. These boards are eight pounds, and I’ve got to lift that over my head, and at times when I’m using the top racks, I gotta slide that in nice and slow, slide it back out to prevent any damage. The mid-range is okay, but then also, I’ve got to get all the way down to the bottom, and sometimes I’m in this deep split stance. And I’ve got to lean forward and I’ve got all this weight in front of me pulling on my spine. I’ve got to hover that in, and then sometimes hover that out all the way with stability.
3:30 And I have to be able to do that, five times for each board, because each board gets two coats of base, and then three coats of grip. So it is a lot, a lot of work. And also, when we start to assemble, oh my gosh! I absolutely love it, but at the same time, we’re slinging around fifteen pound boards for these commandos. And it’s a lot. I don’t have to tell you that!
4:00 I like to well round my training. Last night, I was on the board with battle ropes, and I was doing a lot of scapular moves for stability, and some strength moves. And this morning, at the park, I was on the board again, and I had bands hooked up to a railing system, and I was just holding my position. Really doing a lot of posture work, because I knew that I really wanted to keep up the strength of my back.
4:27 So for me, the functional training, the stability and the balance is an absolute necessity to keeping healthy and staying injury free. And also allows me to make crazy videos for you.
4:40 So let me know if stability and endurance training is really applicable for you, because I love hearing your stories and how everybody’s training, and all the very unique training methods, and just your lifestyle. It’s really interesting to me.
4:55 Well these boards aren’t going to grip themselves, so I’m going to get back at it. Thanks for hanging out at the Si Boratory. I will see you soon Si-Boarders, and remember, continue to keep on Breaking the Rules!
