Functional Training for Sports

by Michael Boyle

Reach a higher level of athleticism with Functional Training for Sports ! Functional training is a complete system of athletic development that focuses on training the body the way it will be used in competition, making it the most efficient and effective form of training today. Author Mike Boyle, renowned strength and conditioning coach formerly with the Boston Bruins, addresses movement, body positions, and abilities that are essential for success in competition. Through Functional Training for Sports , you will improve your total athleticism, enhance your performance, and reduce injuries through exercise progressions that will spur your development potential for specific movement patterns you commonly use in your sport. Providing tests for you to determine where to start, the progressions focus on training for the torso, the upper body, and the lower body. The book also provides detailed programs that incorporate the exercises and methods for these progressions. As you master each progression, you will be preparing yourself to perform in any situation with notable improvements in stability and balance, reaction time, core strength, and power. This whole-body, sport-applied system makes Functional Training for Sports your key to today's most effective and efficient training!

Genres: Sports, Fitness, Health

208 pages, Paperback

First published August 13, 2003

Reviews

[Jake · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn't really sure what to expect when I cracked open Mike Boyle's "Functional Training for Sports". Truthfully, I'm not entirely sure how I ended up with a copy. I know only a little bit about Mike Boyle, and half of it because he apparently made some controversial (or at least unkind) statements about Crossfit, and ended up on Crossfit Radio in the same episode as Coach Blauer. In any case, I decided to finally pull the book off the shelves and actually go through it.

"Functional Training" is one of those buzzwords that has been floating around for at least a decade or two, and it always struck me as something that wasn't terribly well-defined, but involved a lot of bosu balls and core boards. The cover, which depicts a man standing on a core board, near a squat rack, with a medicine ball in hand, did little to dissuade me from that view. But what about the content itself.

The content is interesting, though I confess to having mixed feelings about the utility of it. Functional Training for Sports is Boyle's attempt to bring the concepts, methods, and specific drills of Functional Training to the non-trainer. The book is aimed at the layman, or at least, the non-science oriented trainer. Boyle eschews a lot of the in-depth scientific terminology in favor of a rather straight-forward, basic writing style. The writing is, for the most part, readable and easily understandable, even to someone with a relatively poor science background (like yours truly). Boyle begins by defining functional training in a general sense before delving into specific components of the training, and finally providing some sample plans.

So why the mixed feelings?

On the one hand, the book does a pretty good job of doing what ti sets out to do. It provides a solid outline of various training methods that comprise Boyle's style of "Functional Training". The only section that I felt was a bit sparse was the section on Olympic Lifting, which is a highly technical subject and I think Boyle gives it short shrift. Perhaps he feels that you can learn Olympic Lifts from a book, which is understandable, but in that case, he might have done better to not include them. The short descriptions combined with a few pictures did not quite work for me.

The problem I found with the book was, having finished it, I found very little I could take away from it. Most of the books programming is oriented towards sports like hockey, football, basketball, and so on. I could probably adapt some of the material to Muay Thai with a bit of effort, and some of the principles definitely can carry over, but I could just as easily get more focused information from other sources (Kevin Kearns, Ross Enamait, etc.). As someone who is just sort of a general fitness nut, I found a lot of Boyle's programs just to long and complex for my needs. Most of his workouts are designed to take an hour to an hour and a half, which is more time than I usually spend on my S&C.

That said, none of those are really fair criticism in the sense that the book is bad. It just didn't offer a whole for my needs, which is less of a failing of the book,and more just a failing of matched purposes. It's certainly nice to have, and I may steal some stuff from it, but for the moment, it doesn't hold a place in my highest rankings.

[Sergio Marin · Rating 5 out of 5]

De los mejores libros que he leído sobre entrenamiento, con ejemplos muy prácticos y consejos bastante útiles.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an incredible resource for anyone trying to get out of a training rut. I lifted weights for years and gave it up when I got obsessed with Ashtanga yoga. The style actually incorporates elements that are very similar to Boyle's fundamental principals, namely that throwing your own body around will give you plenty to work with. Boyle cares about flexibility, making it easy to design a strength program to complement, not complicate, your yoga practice. For example he has a salambasana-like floor sequence that addresses all the pesky little muscles of the shoulder girdle which can improve the crap out of your chatturangas. The only caveat is that the elements that make these moves so effective also make them a little tedious: I believe Boyle is 100% right about the importance of working asymetrically so that the stronger side can't take over for the weak side, but jeez, it makes everything twice as long, and gosh, where are my toys? How will I get respect in the gym if I don't use the equipment? I'm not being snarky here, this actually matters more to me than I would like. Once I convince myself to care more about functional strength than respect, I will probably bump this up to five stars.

[Gente Leyente · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro obligatorio para entender el entrenamiento.
Fácil de leer, con muchos ejemplos y ejercicios.
Escrito por un referente del entrenamiento deportivo.
Libro de cabecera para cualquier entrenador.

[Sergio Arratia Lechosa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un manual que todo entrenador y persona que entrene debería tener en su estantería. Libro lleno de información general que vale oro acerca del mundo del entrenamiento

[Kolyo Kolev · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best book in the field. Strongly recommend it to everyone who wants to become successful personal trainer.

[Carlos Barrio · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recommend this book for people who are new to the world of training (as a coach) and who can give you easy-to-use tips and guides to get started with your first personal training sessions.

I find the author's vision from experience interesting, as he explains his learning process and how through practice and trial and error I have learned to write this work and share his experiences.

Perhaps what brings me closer to his point of view is the continuous relationship between sport and the specificity of training, that is, training according to what is developed in the sport you practice. This gives a coherent approach to training and a simpler and more practical vision within the complexity of it.

I really liked the analogy of training with cooking (something I had already used before) by which he encourages you to start practicing and even if it doesn't turn out so well, don't get frustrated and accept the process as a continuous improvement through self-reflection and exploration.

It also offers a guide of basic exercises explained and developed with their progressions and regressions, which are quite useful and which he has used in his process of evolution as a trainer. It also offers, from different sections (mobility, strength, power...) something that gives you a certain general vision of how to structure a long-term training process in a certain order.

On the negative side, I have to say that some parts were a bit repetitive and I found them a bit long, but I also understand that maybe they are parts that I already knew and did not attract my attention as much as others that did not.

Finally, it offers you some tables with training models so that you can have a base with which to start programming and that I have tested myself in training and they seem quite complete and above all practical.

As it is my first training book in my new professional field, which opens me up to encourage me to read more in this field, I will give it a little more score that I think I could give it in the future.

I would give it a 7.5/10

[Jay Ubalde · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful and encyclopaedic. Borrowed from my local library, and I'm now thinking of purchasing one for myself. The emphasis on movement and direction was particularly useful.

Overall, an excellent reference book on athleticism, and conditioning, but somehow omitted the points on the basics of exercise science. After all, training long and hard isn't enough, and without a holistic approach I doubt athletes could reach their full potentials.

But as the book explained: Strength is strength... This is the beauty of functional training: usable strength and usable speed are developed in a sensible (it really read more, to me, as 'practical') fashion.

[Darin · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are many exercises and drills at a variety of levels for improving functional strength. The author clears up some misconceptions about functional training.

Note that I believe (and follow) the meanings Goodreads gives for what each number of stars means. Therefore, the majority of my ratings are 3 stars ("liked it").

[Alec · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great insights that have lead to improvements in my training.

[Bojan Avramovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ako ste upravo završili DIF ovo je prava knjiga za vas

[Yahya Ouz]

thank you

[Justin]

This is more for athletes than people who just exercise for health/fun(as per the title).
I've read other exercising for athletes books and I've found them to be mostly applicable to the layman. This book didn't seem nearly as universal to me.