Formosa Fitness

Talking about functional bodybuilding lately means we have to bring up form vs. function. Here, I mean form as in how you look -- not technique. Some people look like a million buck on the outside but when you ask them to do something......yuck.

In a seminar I taught, we had a young man join us and he was pretty buff. Strong looking upper body, defined claves, six-pack, hell he had everything on the menu. Then I asked him to do a deadlift using just his body weight. He couldn't do it. Seriously. His hamstrings were like piano wires. His back was so bowed he could have shot an arrow with it. He couldn't un-bow it no matter how hard he tried. We had three trainers trying to help him. No luck. Squats showed the same deficiencies. He couldn't do a body squat to save his life. Knees all over the toes, heels off the ground, hips forward instead of sitting into them. He gave up with the seminar after about 10 minutes.

Here's the thing -- if we had put him on a leg extension machine, he probably would have blown all of us away. But take away the machine and he can't do much.

That's not functional fitness and not even good bodybuilding IMO. Using isolation exercises to the extent that you CAN'T do full body ones is worthless no matter how great you look. But this is what working out in a normal gym promotes. Break the body up into pieces with machines and never learn to use it as one piece.

So remember that going for looks is okay. We all want to look good whether we admit it or not. But function must be there - six pack or no.