Functional training has is starting to gain a lot more attention from mainstream fitness gurus and trainers. The goal of functional training is to focus weight lifting in a way that mimics real life, so it serves a direct purpose and has a strong correlation with real life. Instead of just being on weight benches all day doing the same types of lifts people will spend more time doing nontraditional lifts.

This means that functional training  would not include the traditional lifts like the bench press,curls, leg extensions, and tricep push downs. While these are great lifts for building muscle the actual movements involved fail to replicate any real life/ daily life movements.

Functional movements like lunges, squats and various core movements are very functional especially for athletes. For those looking to body build and really sculpt large powerful muscle traditional lifts that have one joint isolated movements can be more beneficial than multi-joint functional type movements.

A persons real goal should be to find a balance between these to styles of muscle building. Do not feel like you are limited to one of the other. Too many men working out get stuck in a particular mindset and stuck with a program that their bodies have already gotten used to doing. Always add variations. If you are more focused right now on building bigger muscles than add in functional training as part of your off day or cardio.

Functional training will not build muscle mass but it does offer a lot of other benefits. People who do functional training will burn fat, build lean muscle, and teach coordination. A good example of a functional exercise would be a squat press (a weight squat with a shoulder press completed at the top of the movement). The weight used will do little to stimulate muscle growth but it will burn a lot of fat and build you lean muscle giving you a beach body.

The main thing to realize is that functional training is great of leaning up and getting cut but it is a power workout for bulking up. Muscle is built by doing heavy loads. In most cases heavy loads are too much for functional movement.s

No that you understand the difference between functional training and traditional training start adding more of it into your regular routines. Its ok to get off the olympic weight benches once in a while and focus on improving every aspect of your physical body and not just muscle size.