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Christian Thibaudeau’s recent article “The Future of Functional Fitness Training” is currently the treat of the week in Facebook discussions. The article has a few good points, such as No. 3: “You need to learn to properly learn to use your legs.” That section talks about the snatch/clean error that finds athletes flinging the barbell forward during a lift, and I think many athletes would do well to take note of this piece of advice. We’re working hard to correct this exact error in athletes at Functional Fitness 204. That aside, I’m not convinced of Thibaudeau’s main point: that Functional Fitness athletes need to focus on Olympic lifting and strength work. To me, this is the same error just about every coach makes when just getting into Functional Fitness. I made the same error as Thibaudeau a few years back. When evaluating the whiteboard every day in 2011 or so, I asked myself, “What’s preventing the majority of athletes from doing workouts as prescribed?” My answer was a lack of strength, and so we slightly shifted our programming toward barbell training to address the deficiency. I remained convinced I was on the right path until about a year ago, when I evaluated our Open performances. What I saw was this: most of our athletes had great amounts of strength, but they didn’t have the conditioning to apply that strength beyond about 15-25 reps. In other cases, gymnastics ability was a limiting factor—and lets separate gymnastics work from weightlifting here, though it’s clear both require strength. To balance things out, we created the 204 Gymnasty program, which is designed to put in some regular focused work on gymnastics, with the goal of increasing strength and skill with body-weight movents. To give more options to people who want to focus on strength and power, we’ll shortly be starting our barbell club. More details on that specialty program to come shortly. In our Functional Fitness program, we’re continuing the steady doses of couplets and triplets as well as strength work, all of which forms the core of good programming. I don’t think we were necessarily on the wrong track two years ago, but I think we’re on a more optimal track now. Take this example: seven years ago, I took a female triathlete with great endurance and a modest base of strength, and we added in a lot of strength and power. Current numbers are 300-lb. squat, 305 deadlift for 10 reps, 190 clean and jerk, 145 snatch. The first two numbers are quite good, and the last two are at least competitive in Functional Fitness competitions, though we’re working to drive them up into the 210/160 range. So what limits this athlete? Gymnastics—for seven years. Did all our barbell training solve our greatest problem? No. However, a recent six-month block of focused gymnastics work increased gymnastics prowess and barbell numbers for upper-body lifts. I found that fascinating. Take this more general example: in the 2014 Open workout involving deadlifts and box jumps (14.3), I saw some of our strongest deadlifters put up numbers equivalent to athletes whose maxes were far less. Remember, of course, that Thibaudeau and the strength crew will always tell you submaximal loads are made easier by a big max. I agree, with this caveat: Without sufficient conditioning, submaximal loads are made easier by a big max for 1 set only. After that, or any time you’re breathing hard, the big 1RM is irrelevant. I’m aware that some outlier athletes with large deadlift maxes posted great scores in 14.3, but Page 1 of the leaderboard shows that a lot of multi-year Functional Fitness Games athletes registered excellent scores as well. And those people can run and swim and do pull-ups for days. My contention is that these Games competitors have lots of strength and the general physical preparedness to apply it over many reps. I’ve seen many great Olympic lifters and powerlifters implode in Functional Fitness workouts when they don’t have a decent level of conditioning. If you put Rich Froning against a powerlifter with an 650-lb. max and asked both to deadlift 225 50 times on the clock, I’d put cash on Froning. Consider this: in a recent deadlift/burpee workout, I was beaten by many athletes with deadlift maxes below mine. The load of 225 should have been “easy” for me, but my poor conditioning allowed other athletes with PRs in the high 300s to cruise past while I stared at the bar, huffing and puffing while knowing it was about 50 percent of my max. About six months ago, these points were all hammered home for me when I did some detailed work on Greg Glassman’s 2002 Functional Fitness Journal article “What Is Fitness?” If you haven’t read it recently, do so now. Pay particular attention to the pyramid on Page 8: Theoretical Hierarchy of Development. Recently, Pat Sherwood and others have rightly called attention back to this pyramid. We’ll leave the foundation—nutrition—out for now to avoid complicating the discussion. With that adjustment, the pyramid moves from metabolic conditioning to gymnastics to weightlifting and throwing to sport. Each element is based on the layer or layers beneath it. After several years of trying to reorder the pyramid myself—using lifting to support conditioning, gymnastics and sport—I realized I was making a tremendous mistake if I wanted to create athletes with increased work capacity. If I wanted to create powerlifters or Olympic lifters, I was definitely on the right track, and indeed we have a few athletes who could walk into lifting meets tomorrow and represent themselves well. And that’s great. I myself love lifting, as do many of our members, and we’ll always do a lot of it because it’s great fun. But to succeed in Functional Fitness competition and to achieve well-rounded fitness, what are the top two priorities for my athletes? My answer—based on experiments over the years—is now metabolic conditioning and gymnastics work. Interestingly enough, Glassman put those two layers at the bottom of the pyramid—below weightlifting, and certainly well below sport. But lifting is sexy. All but gone are the days of the Fran and Diane PR videos. Now Facebook is now full of lifting video after lifting video in a weird game of one-up-manship. And that, right there, is the problem: Strength coaches are evaluating top Functional Fitness athletes as they are, not as they developed, and they’re trying to reverse-engineer the pyramid and apply it to new and up-and-coming athletes. Thibaudeau talks about how all top Functional Fitness Games athletes have great Oly numbers. This is true. But what they all have—all of them without exception—is an incredible base of metabolic conditioning. No one gets out of the Open without that. Even the lifters who have somewhat pedestrian numbers in relation to their peers have this base level of conditioning. And they all—without exception—have very solid gymnastics skills. Even those who aren’t spectacular on the rings can move through a muscle-up workout with pace, while many top athletes boast gymnastics skills that now include more advanced movements such as back tucks, levers and so on. I’d suggest most Functional Fitness Games athletes followed this path up the pyramid, whether they did it on purpose or not: conditioning, gymnastics, strength. I have the 2010 Functional Fitness Games program, and I’ll throw out Rich Froning’s 225 snatch PR and 7:18 Helen number as my evidence. The snatch number was decent in 2010 (and has since increased to 300+), but the Helen score was very good in 2010, and it’s still very good in 2015. Top athletes make us forget about their conditioning because that piece of the puzzle is already in place, and it’s now time to work on a 350 clean and jerk. This, of course, is not to say strength is irrelevant. It’s critical. But I think great proficiency in gymnastics would certainly bestow a formidable level of strength on an athlete, as well as impressive body control, both of which would then support dramatic gains in strength created with barbells and other implements. Indeed, Glassman said this of gymnastics: “The return is unprecedented and the most frustrating elements are most beneficial—long before you’ve developed even a modicum of competency.” And so I return to the pyramid, with the acknowledgement that Glassman was, after all, correct. I believe that, and I think the current reordering of the pyramid is farcical, particularly when done by Thibaudeau and those who aren’t really Functional Fitness coaches to begin with. They’re trying to apply a non-Functional Fitness model to Functional Fitness, and it doesn’t work in my experience. I no longer believe you can build a top Functional Fitness athlete on an overly wide base of strength. If I was looking to send an athlete to the Functional Fitness Games, here’s how I’d do it: I’d find an athlete with an engine—the kind of person who laughs like a pirate when muscles start burning. I would not find the strongest athlete, but the one who has the most horsepower on burpees, 95-lb. thrusters, 75-lb. snatches and 225-lb. deadlifts. He or she should have a basic but not elite level of strength—enough to be able to RX most workouts, but not enough to take run at King Kong or the other scaled-up monsters. From there, I’d work like a madman to eliminate all gymnastics weaknesses, building the strength-to-weight ratio while maintaining and slightly improving already-great conditioning. I’d introduce some lifting from the beginning, of course, but it wouldn’t be the focus. I’d want to ensure impeccable technique and achieve modest levels of strength without an investment that would affect conditioning and gymnastics—say a 425-450 deadlift, 350 squat, 200-225 snatch and 275-285 clean and jerk. Again, I would not focus on these numbers—just have the athlete build up basic proficiency with lifting. I’m certain the gymnastics training would produce a strong core that would support this lifting. I would also ban this athlete from posting lifting PRs to Facebook, and for the first year, I would hold him or her out of competitions, which usually distract athletes and disrupt training with stupid max-out sessions implemented upon the announcement of a clean ladder or something similar. Once I was convinced I had an athlete with a supercharged engine and no chinks in the gymnastics armour, I’d start focusing more on lifting and driving up the lifting numbers. I know from experience you can quickly improve strength numbers with focused work, and I’d target a 500 deadlift, 400 squat, 260 snatch and 315 clean and jerk. If the conditioning ever started to suffer, I’d dial back the lifting. With the engine and gymnastics skills already in place, I think I’d have a regional-level competitor on my hands if we came within 10 percent of the target numbers. Add on about 10 percent more strength and I might have a Games athlete. I think that task would take about 5-6 years with the right athlete—and rare he or she would be, of course. What I know for certain is that the path of development would go from conditioning to gymnastics to lifting to sport. Not the other way around. So Thibaudeau and others can take all the strong kids and fire them on squat programs and Oly work. I’ll take the engines and feed them a diet of Fran, Helen and Cindy, as well as lots of gymnastics training and ample but not excessive amounts of lifting. I’m pretty certain what the result would be, though I’ll concede certain freaks of nature can certainly achieve monstrous strength and then tack on conditioning and gymnastics. But those guys and girls are unicorns. And if one of them showed up at Functional Fitness 204 and asked me how to get to the Functional Fitness Games, this would be my answer: Do Fran today, do Helen tomorrow, do Cindy the day after that. Then squat heavy the next day. Then do Diane. Stick to that plan and stay off Facebook.