All About Fitness

Functional training is a popular fitness phrase that can mean different things to different people. Coach Mike Boyle describes functional training as training for a purpose, but in reality, functional training simply refers to an exercise program that is designed to help you move and perform better as opposed to simply looking better. The traditional approach to physical therapy is for a therapist to work on the joint or body part that is not working or in pain. Gary Gray is a physical therapist who needed a way to help his patients without having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on equipment; since he couldn't afford expensive muscle-isolation machines, Gary focused on helping his clients by treating the entire body as opposed to just a particular body-part or joint as a result, the concept of functional training was born (this was the 1980s, btw). Gary Gray has evolved his approach of working with the entire body and created the Gray Institute to teach physical therapists, personal trainers and str