Functional Strength: The Only 5 Exercises You Really Need

When people talk about functional strength training and then they start standing on a bowl and juggle oranges doesn't make a lot of sense to me because that doesn't look like my life. But if you have to get a heavy bag of groceries or something, you got to deadlift. You need to find several exercise that have a reputation for building strength that reaches beyond the ability to do this exercise. There's no correlation between the number of exercises and the platform results. So find several exercises that you enjoy that don't hurt you. And there's absolutely no reason [music] for you to change these exercises. Just enjoy them for years. I'm obviously very partial towards kettle bells. But one of the great many benefits of kettle bell training, it allows you to train power and power endurance in extremely safe manner. And what's also very unique about it, you don't have to use a lot of weight. The big issue is you have to hip hinge, not lift the kettle bell with your back or with your arms. So some years back me and several other of our colleagues instructors we started doing swings. So we were using just a 53lb bell. The most experienced guys we were able to generate over 10 gs of acceleration. So basically we made that 50 lb bell weigh 500 lb. So you can apply tremendous amount of load. Of course you don't start with that. It's not how you start your swings. And you can develop power endurance. So you can do a whole lot of different many different sets of many sets. In the kettlebell world we refer to the what the hell effect. What the hell effect is when you're getting an adaptation that's not a beginner's gain, but it's an adaptation that's totally unexpected. There's some collateral benefit, how suddenly you're able to do something. The improvements in fat loss, improvements in resilience, but like why would anybody want to do power training who's not a power athlete? For the reasons of longevity, how important it is to have high levels of power and the kettle bell swing is one of the ways, one of the ways to develop it. So, some of the tactical teams that I worked with in the US here, when they added either swings or snatches to their training with the kettle bell, plus one-legged kettle bell deadlifts as well, they stopped tearing their hamstrings. So, you have this amazing way to do eccentric loading for the hamstring, but it's very safe and just really prepares you. One of my friends is still playing baseball in the 60s, he says, "Thank you for the kettle bells." He went through the course 20 years ago, and he's still doing that. He's retired, but he's still he's still doing that. So, that's a great benefit. If we are looking at at the barbell, I would start out with the narrow sumo deadlift. Your stance is just wide enough to let your arms through. Uh your arms stay parallel to each other. So, you just find a very comfortable stance for yourself. And when people talk about functional strength training and then they start standing on a ball and juggle oranges, doesn't make a lot of sense to me because that doesn't look like my life or yours probably, right? But if you have to get a heavy bag of groceries or something, you got to deadlift. It's extremely important to learn how to hip hinge. How important it is for your back health and for your longevity. So you learn to do that. Then whether you decide to pursue deadlift or not, a fantastic exercise for everybody is a zer squat. The zer squat is very easy, very simple. In the zer squat, you hold the bar like this in the crooks of your elbows. So it's resting right here. The advantage of the zer squat over, let's say, the back squat or the front squat is even if you have messed up shoulders, wrists, elbows, you still can do that. And you have tremendous reflexive stabilization of your midsection. It's just very very powerful. So you acquire that skill of getting tight. You don't want to, you know, bruise yourself. You want to be comfortable. You want to do it right. >> But it's not doesn't take a lot of skill to do that. If we're sticking with the example of the barbell, you find some pressing exercise. The bench press has gotten bad reputation. If you look at athletes, they are making a great use of the bench press. It's a relatively simple exercise. And unlike other pressing exercises, it allows you to make strength gains with a very low volume of training. So you can do several sets of five once a week in the bench press and keep getting stronger. The beautiful thing about the barbell is first of all the satisfaction of lifting really heavy stuff. Some people find it extremely satisfying. If you don't, maybe it's not for you, but if you do, it's it's incredible. Then the ability to adjust the weights in small increments. So you can prescribe 87.5% one rep max and you can do that. The other great benefit of the barbell is some of the lifts allow you to make great gains in strength with a very low volume. It's possible to do three sets of five once a week in the squat and get very strong. Try to do that with pistols. It's just not going to happen. Grip strength is extremely important. Pretty much by gripping tighter, you are instantly increasing your strength in anything that you do. take some um pedestrian exercise like curls and do as many strict traps as you possibly can. The way you normally do them and then start just crushing that bar or that dumbbell or whatever that you're curling, you will immediately be able to knock out several more reps. So that makes you so much stronger. And again, the value of a strong wrist and grip is obviously very important for whatever reason. Obviously, it correlates with longevity. We don't know why. Correlation is not uh causation. So we don't know whether getting stronger a stronger grip is going to make us live longer. But statistically it's worth a try, right? So one can either find exercises that train the grip in the context of developing something else or train the grip directly. So either way is is great. So the first examples would be climbing the rope or doing pull-ups and weighted pull-ups on a rope. That's a great way to train obviously. So what you do, the way you program it is uh let's say once a week you climb the rope and a couple days a week you do pull-ups. That's a good way to go about it and you don't need to do anything else. And another example would be some exercises like the kettle bell snatch. When you start snatching a heavy kettle bell and you drop it from overhead, that eccentric loading is is very very powerful and that develops grip very very well. We also warn you that hanging on the bar and doing farmer carries beneficial as they are for many reasons. Carrying two heavy objects, it's going to really pound your spine. But on the other hand, asymmetrical carry, it appears to be very beneficial. Then there's another interesting example. Dr. Mike Pvost, who used to work with the US Marine Corps and Navy, he developed this very interesting protocol and a test called the kettle bell where you take a kettle bell that's approximately 30% of your body weight. He has good reasons why it has to be that way and you pretty much run with this kettle bell and you switch hands as much as often as you want. And it's a fantastic way to improve your running posture, to develop very stabilizing muscles, and to improve your ability to rock, but it doesn't beat you up as much rocking does. You know, rocking, carrying heavy weight, that's it's rough on the body. It's a fantastic way to train your endurance an additional way. But it's also not something you jump into immediately. [clears throat] And also what's very cool is because you get to switch hands very often, you're not destroying uh your QL and other stabilizers are contracting isometrically. If you muscle contracts briefly and relaxes, contracts, relaxes, and the contraction cycles are really short, you're able to avoid glycolysis, you're able to keep that muscle working aerobically for a long time and not beat yourself down. Start by walking with a kettle bell, switch hands off, and then eventually build up to running and obviously build up gradually. >> Held like a suitcase. Yes, only only like a suitcase. So those are just couple examples. Uh there are many other examples. You can do snatch grip deadlifts. The list is very very long. We can address the same thing in the same way with kettle bells. You can look in the body weight exercises. But you need to find several exercises that have a reputation for building strength that reaches beyond the ability to do this exercise. If you just do curls, you're going to get better at curls, but not in much else. Doing something like extension is not going to carry over to the squat. you're just not. The coordination is so radically different. So, you find several exercises that you enjoy, that don't hurt you, that you have the equipment available, that you got the proper coaching for, and you pretty much stick with them. And there's absolutely no reason for you to change these exercises. It's possible to change them on the margins, you know, from a wide grip bench press to narrow grip bench press, uh squats with a paws, and so on and so forth, but you don't really have to do uh a great variety of things. there's no correlation between the number of exercises and uh the platform results. So find this limited just limited battery of exercises that you can you can do well you can do pain-free [music] and just enjoy them for years.

Functional strength isn’t about more exercises—it’s about choosing the right ones. In this video, legendary strength coach Pavel Tsatsouline breaks down the 5 functional strength exercises that build real-world strength, longevity, and carryover you can actually use. Subscribe to RESPIRE for more science-based health tips: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyNaCRf6Aaljcm9ZWARawXw re·spire (verb) – (1) to breathe (2) to recover hope, courage, or strength 🌟🌟🌟 NEW VIDEOS EVERY WEEK 🌟🌟🌟 00:00 Intro 00:32 Kettlebell Exercises 02:18 Barbell Exercises 04:27 Grip Strength Training 07:16 Building Your Routine This video is a condensed and highly edited version of the full 255 minute podcast from @HubermanLab. For more information, watch the full episode (link below) and follow the podcast. Pavel Tsatsouline is a Belarusian-born fitness expert known for introducing Russian kettlebell training to the West. A former Soviet Special Forces physical training instructor with a sports science degree, he founded StrongFirst, Inc., focusing on "low tech/high concept" strength and resilience training for the general public, emphasizing practical strength over sheer size. Andrew Huberman is an American neuroscientist and tenured associate professor in the department of neurobiology and psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine. Podcast Host: Andrew Huberman Podcast Guest: Pavel Tsatsouline YouTube: @HubermanLab Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3OpxT65fKw&t=3s&pp=ygUVYW5kcmV3IGh1YmVybWFuIHBhdmVs Fair Use Disclaimer 1. Under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, commenting, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. 2. We do not own the rights to all content. They have, in accordance with fair use, been repurposed with the intent of educating and inspiring others. We must state that in no way, shape or form are we intending to infringe rights of the copyright holder. 3. Content used is strictly for research and education, all under the Fair Use law. #functionaltraining #functionalfitness #strengthtraining #strengthandconditioning #strength #kettlebell #gripstrength #fitness #healthtips