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Modern Meathead Notes:

• “Influencer exercises” are those that attempt to do 10 things at once while accomplishing none of them with any degree of effectiveness.

  • These exercises are “combination” style exercises which claim to be targeting 1-5 different muscle groups simultaneously.

• The problem? We only get to choose a single direction of resistance when we lift weights.

  • And this means that we can only effectively train the muscles that resist that resistance directly!

• Think about it this way: would you try to do biceps curls with dumbbells while lying down sideways on the floor?

  • No! Or, at least, I hope…

• Many people that preach these exercises justify them on the basis of training “stability” and "because they’re functional”…but let’s debunk that!

Why Functional Exercise Isn’t Functional

I asked ChatGPT what the “functional exercise” movement is.

Here’s what it said (and why it’s wrong):

ChatGPT’s response illustrates all the false assumptions and nonsensical claims the functional movement continues to make.

I’m going to use this response - claim by claim - to debunk the “movement” in its entirety.

Let’s start from the top:

False assumption #1 - there are certain exercises that - in absolute - do and do not prepare someone for “real-life” movements.

We have muscles, bones, ligaments, tendons, and joints - and we load each of these tissues during any exercise.

Whether or not an exercise has “carryover” to daily activities is a matter of how an exercise imposes force on the body - not how it looks or how many muscles it involves.

And this is the fundamental error that the functional movement makes - the assumption that, to improve our function as human beings, we need to perform activities in the weight room that look identical to those that we perform in “real life”.

Muscles are dumb (in a sense).

They respond to force based on joint position.

Whether I’m loading my glutes in a leg press or hip thrust, or by doing a loaded carry (which looks like walking), my glutes simply respond to the demands of force.

Therefore, if I improve the contraction of my glutes in a leg press, I improve the contraction of my glutes during walking, running, or any other “natural” activity.

Contraction does not care if you’re squatting down to take a poo or using a hack squat.

Unlike human beings, contraction is impartial to what a movement looks like from the surface.

False assumption #2 - that muscle isolation exists.

It does not.

There is no such thing as an exercise that isolates specific muscles.

Joint stability is a byproduct of the “coordinated working of muscles” that the functional movement claims is only specific to multi-joint movements.

Whether I’m doing a leg extension or a single leg bosu ball squat, the muscles that surround my knee, hip, ankle, and spine must coordinate in their contraction to keep our joints functioning properly.

While there is a clear difference between a leg extension and bosu ball squat, it is in the forces imposed on the body - and what rate-limiters are created as a consequence of that.

In a bosu ball squat, our rate-limiter is usually balance.

In a leg extension, our rate-limiter is the quads.

Contraction is fundamentally the same, no matter how you train it - the difference is in the specific forces imposed and how our body must coordinate around them to perform a motion.

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