"Functional Training" Is a Marketing Label, Not a Method

In ACSM's 2024 Worldwide Survey of Fitness Trends, "functional fitness training" ranked No. 14. A year earlier it had jumped to No. 5. The industry keeps voting for a phrase that researchers still cannot define the same way twice. That gap between marketing heat and scientific clarity is the whole story.

Twenty Papers. Zero Shared Definition.

In 2022, Bernardo Ide and colleagues reviewed the 20 most recent PubMed papers on functional training in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living. Their findings were blunt: there is no agreement on a universal definition; the claimed benefits match what traditional strength, power, and endurance training already produce; and the exercises are the same ones coaches already use — squats, lunges, Olympic lifts, plyometrics, continuous work, intervals.

Their recommendation was not soft. They argued the terms functional training, high-intensity functional training, and functional fitness should stop describing training programs at all, because the labels add confusion without adding a distinct method. Fleck and Kraemer put it another way in Designing Resistance Training Programs: functional training could mean virtually any training meant to improve a task. When a word covers everything, it explains nothing.

What People Usually Mean by "Functional"

Walk into a gym and "functional" usually means one of three things, none of which need a special brand name.

• Multi-joint free-weight patterns — hinges, squats, pushes, pulls, carries — sold as more "real world" than machines.

• Balance, coordination, and daily-living strength, which is how ACSM itself defines the trend, especially for older adults and clinical populations.

• Whatever looks cooler than a seated machine circuit: bosu presses, banded circus acts, or a circuit that feels hard because it is unstable, not because the load progressed.

Those first two can be excellent training. The third is often just entertainment with a scientific-sounding sticker. The problem is not that multi-joint work or ADL practice is wrong. The problem is pretending "functional" is a method instead of a vibe.

Specificity Already Did This Job

Exercise science already has a clearer rule: specificity. Adaptations follow the demands you train — force, velocity, range, energy system, skill. Stone and colleagues' work on training specificity for strength-power athletes makes the same point without inventing a new category: match the training to the task, after you build the capacities the task needs.

A deadlift that prepares someone to pick something up off the floor is specific. A single-leg RDL that cleans up a soccer player's hinge is specific. A bosu curl that mainly trains not falling over is specific to not falling over on a bosu. Calling all three "functional" erases the difference that actually matters for programming.

How I Sort Programs Without the Buzzword

I do not ask whether a session is functional. I ask what it is for.

• What task are we preparing for — sport, work, stairs, getting off the floor, a strength test?

• Which quality is the limiter — strength, power, endurance, balance, skill?

• Which exercise loads that quality in a way this person can progress and recover from?

If those three answers are clear, the word functional adds nothing. If they are not clear, the word functional is usually hiding that fact.

Bottom Line

Functional training, as sold, is mostly a marketing label. Real training still comes down to progressive overload, specificity, and recovery. Name the quality. Name the task. Pick the tool. Drop the adjective when it does not change the program.