Functional Training

I have been thinking a lot lately about how there is no dedicated training program for the development of the human brain and nervous system in business and industry.

We have Six Sigma training, Lean training, and Total Quality Management (TQM) training but there is no systematized method that industry uses at this time in order to train the nervous systems of their employees.

Their employees – the ones that execute the above systems!

What business has done is to encourage participation in specific learning modules/ seminars, etc. in order to enable their employees to learn more about their specific jobs, but hasn’t done anything to affect the big picture (developing the human organism as a whole).

As an ex-Physical Educator, this reminds me of the different physical training methods that exist.

There are those that have the bodybuilding type mentality – those that train each individual muscle simply for size without any regard as to how it works with the other muscles in the bigger picture.

Then there is the functional training group.

They are the one who concerned mainly with how things work together. They train to increase function, leaving the asthetics in the background.

However, when you would see a bodybuilder next to someone whose main drive is functional training, the functional trainer would have a better appearance by most people’s standards.

Bodybuilders are often referred to as being “all show, and no go”, which is a reference to how inefficiently they are put together (I would describe it by saying how poorly integrated they are).

Those concerned mainly with functional training will consistently outperform so-called bodybuilders in functional activities (aren’t all activities functional?!) because they have learned how to use more of their whole self, while the other training method produces a bunch of “parts” that don’t work well together because they haven’t been trained to work together.

And I won't even get into the shrinkage part of it.....

When looking at employee development in business and industry from this perspective, one can see that they are creating “bodybuilders” – they’re only training a small portion of their employees potential.

Corporations are missing out on fully capitalizing on their human element.

They are only training the “thinking” part of their employee’s self-image.

And remember, how you take action and function in the world is determined by your self-image.

As we’ve mentioned before, your self-image consists of four parts:

Feeling self image
Thinking self image
Emoting self image
Movement self image

The contribution of each of the components to any particular action varies, but each component will be present to some extent in every action we take.

To only train a small portion of our self-image is to miss out on an incredible opportunity for not only growth, but true transformation.

And in an economy like the one we’re in right now, we need transformation.

When corporations begin focusing on developing the entire human organism - their human element - we will begin to see how truly capable we really are.

LET ME ASK YOU SOMETHING…
Do you or your company approach your development with a bodybuilding mentality?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…
Send us an email and let us know what you are doing to stay ahead of your competition!

*****

Chad Estes
Movement Specialist
cestes@etmconsultants.com