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Functional Training
Take your performance to the next level with Functional Training. Author Juan Carlos Santana brings you his revolutionary approach to training and conditioning methods sure to improve your function in any sport or activity. Functional Training covers the recent breakthroughs, the most exercises, and proven programs that you can follow or incorporate into your existing training plan.
Offering strength, endurance, power, and sport-specific exercises and programming, Functional Training is a comprehensive resource for every athlete, coach, and athletic trainer. Covering the concepts, exercises, progressions, and sequencing on which a sound functional training program is based, it addresses the needs of more than 11 sports and features 135 exercises, including body weight, bands and pulleys, dumbbells and kettlebells, medicine balls, and stability balls.
Functional Training features a three-tier approach for integrating functional movements into an existing strength program. Through assessment and analysis, you’ll identify the movements and muscles involved in your sport, then select the best exercises and programs based on desired results and performance goals. In addition to quick exercise sequences and personalized programming to address the big four sport skills, more comprehensive programs can be developed to address your athletic and performance needs and goals.
No matter what your sport, Functional Training will help you achieve optimal results.
Offering strength, endurance, power, and sport-specific exercises and programming, Functional Training is a comprehensive resource for every athlete, coach, and athletic trainer. Covering the concepts, exercises, progressions, and sequencing on which a sound functional training program is based, it addresses the needs of more than 11 sports and features 135 exercises, including body weight, bands and pulleys, dumbbells and kettlebells, medicine balls, and stability balls.
Functional Training features a three-tier approach for integrating functional movements into an existing strength program. Through assessment and analysis, you’ll identify the movements and muscles involved in your sport, then select the best exercises and programs based on desired results and performance goals. In addition to quick exercise sequences and personalized programming to address the big four sport skills, more comprehensive programs can be developed to address your athletic and performance needs and goals.
No matter what your sport, Functional Training will help you achieve optimal results.
- GenresFitness
989 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 15, 2015
77 people are currently reading
242 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
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February 23, 2017I received this book, for free, in exchange for an honest review.
This book is an above average training book. It wasn't as excellent as the last book I read from Human Kinetics (Bodybuilding Anatomy). These statements don't sound like particularly high praise but considering the sea of so so training books out there it is an accomplishment.
The book starts off with a series of exercises you can use to evaluate your weaknesses (major plus!).
It then moves into bodyweight exercises. From there dumbbells/kettlebells are covered.
Next up is medicine balls and then nautilus type machines. I am missing some of the exercise types that were less useful to me (balance balls off the top of my head), but this gives an idea of the expansive breadth of this book.
Each kind of exercise generally focuses on the same type of movements (which seems reasonable for a functional training book).There are usually 2-3 pictures per movement and the descriptive text is better than normal. Personally I would've liked more pictures (preferably anatomical)/detail in the exercises. This oversight seems to put the book's audience more towards trainers and away from trainees. I personally read training books to learn how to train better and although this book had more detail than most it didn't have enough for me.
The book concludes with general programs and sport specific programs.
This book focuses on the meat (exercises and programs). It doesn't talk about nutrition/supplements and other condiments that other similar books often throw in. I am not missing this content as other books usually do readers a disservice with their uninformed/unfocused coverage.
This book is an above average training book. It wasn't as excellent as the last book I read from Human Kinetics (Bodybuilding Anatomy). These statements don't sound like particularly high praise but considering the sea of so so training books out there it is an accomplishment.
The book starts off with a series of exercises you can use to evaluate your weaknesses (major plus!).
It then moves into bodyweight exercises. From there dumbbells/kettlebells are covered.
Next up is medicine balls and then nautilus type machines. I am missing some of the exercise types that were less useful to me (balance balls off the top of my head), but this gives an idea of the expansive breadth of this book.
Each kind of exercise generally focuses on the same type of movements (which seems reasonable for a functional training book).There are usually 2-3 pictures per movement and the descriptive text is better than normal. Personally I would've liked more pictures (preferably anatomical)/detail in the exercises. This oversight seems to put the book's audience more towards trainers and away from trainees. I personally read training books to learn how to train better and although this book had more detail than most it didn't have enough for me.
The book concludes with general programs and sport specific programs.
This book focuses on the meat (exercises and programs). It doesn't talk about nutrition/supplements and other condiments that other similar books often throw in. I am not missing this content as other books usually do readers a disservice with their uninformed/unfocused coverage.
September 18, 2016
A useful book
November 9, 2017
This book goes over sequences of exercises using mostly bodyweight, bands & pulleys, dumbells & kettlebells. It works off of four major sports skills, and feels geared towards building stability and good movement pattern rather than pure strength, and looks great for athletes who do a lot of running within their sport. The author goes over how to integrate these movements into more traditional training and periodization schemes. The programs as given tend to be short, and clearly focused. And there are a ton of them. As I work with two athletes, one coming back from hip replacement and one with serious lower body issues, this is the perfect book, and exactly what I was looking for.
To contrast to Mike Boyle's Functional Training, this book has much less focus on what is a functional exercise, or what makes an exercise functional. A liked JCS' take, but I'm glad I got MB's more in depth description first. There is less pure strength focus in this book, though it's there. The number of programs given and the way they are designed, make this book more useful for designing what you're going to do in the gym today.
For the exercise programming geek and trainers rather than for the 'I need to get in shape' crowd.
To contrast to Mike Boyle's Functional Training, this book has much less focus on what is a functional exercise, or what makes an exercise functional. A liked JCS' take, but I'm glad I got MB's more in depth description first. There is less pure strength focus in this book, though it's there. The number of programs given and the way they are designed, make this book more useful for designing what you're going to do in the gym today.
For the exercise programming geek and trainers rather than for the 'I need to get in shape' crowd.
August 18, 2017
Read this for Continuing Education for my work, however I really find JC Santana's work really interesting, feet on the ground useful!
The book is written for fitness pros, and while anyone can pick it up and use, the information the language is geared more toward fitness professionals and athletic trainers who are familiar with exercise progressions, injuries, etc... That being said- It's an awesome book to use to solidify training protocols as well as to hack away at the "zillions" of choices and to use what is needed and always be open to using other modalities that may also be useful (not just different or popular.)
He goes over defining "functional fitness" how to train with that modality and also to combine it with traditional strength training, within a sports training situation, and with various equipment. There are lots of great photos and sections where there are programs for various sports put together.
Overall, was really pleased with the book will be referencing it a lot to get more ideas in my mind to use. Also was lucky to get to listen to a free webinar where he talked a bit about this the book and his approach to training.
The book is written for fitness pros, and while anyone can pick it up and use, the information the language is geared more toward fitness professionals and athletic trainers who are familiar with exercise progressions, injuries, etc... That being said- It's an awesome book to use to solidify training protocols as well as to hack away at the "zillions" of choices and to use what is needed and always be open to using other modalities that may also be useful (not just different or popular.)
He goes over defining "functional fitness" how to train with that modality and also to combine it with traditional strength training, within a sports training situation, and with various equipment. There are lots of great photos and sections where there are programs for various sports put together.
Overall, was really pleased with the book will be referencing it a lot to get more ideas in my mind to use. Also was lucky to get to listen to a free webinar where he talked a bit about this the book and his approach to training.
Want to read
August 23, 2020me gustaría leeer
May 18, 2021
Santana is an excellent resource on simple, effective functional exercise movements!
October 23, 2016
I received this book as an Library Thing Early Reviewer.
This book will be an excellent addition to my library of training books. I am not aq physical trainer, nor do I play one on television. I am, however, a volleyball coach, and as such I am quite keen on training my athletes effectively and efficiently for our sport. I am a great believer in training our sport but I do realize that there are certain aspects of sports performance which necessitates training that are not directly sport related.
I have searched around a bit for books on functional training specifically for volleyball. There are a few but none that are up to date. This book has some fo the most up to date information and training methods and philosophy.
It is sectioned so that the trainers can read through the first few chapters to get an idea as to what the author's philosophy is and then it breaks down into exercises that the programs will be using for each sport. The book then finally breaks out into the individual sports, talk briefly about the requirements of the sport and then provide a simple blueprint for coaches to use as a guide in designing their own practices.
I found the book useful and quite easy to use. It is a great first step towards building a sensible sport specific training program.
This book will be an excellent addition to my library of training books. I am not aq physical trainer, nor do I play one on television. I am, however, a volleyball coach, and as such I am quite keen on training my athletes effectively and efficiently for our sport. I am a great believer in training our sport but I do realize that there are certain aspects of sports performance which necessitates training that are not directly sport related.
I have searched around a bit for books on functional training specifically for volleyball. There are a few but none that are up to date. This book has some fo the most up to date information and training methods and philosophy.
It is sectioned so that the trainers can read through the first few chapters to get an idea as to what the author's philosophy is and then it breaks down into exercises that the programs will be using for each sport. The book then finally breaks out into the individual sports, talk briefly about the requirements of the sport and then provide a simple blueprint for coaches to use as a guide in designing their own practices.
I found the book useful and quite easy to use. It is a great first step towards building a sensible sport specific training program.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews