Using Functional Trainers for Best Results

Reviews of Functional Training Gyms

Working out at home can be more productive using functional trainers than going to a public gym. Some people prefer them because they simply enjoy doing cable exercises, others like them because they take up less room.

Functional trainers are sometimes called cable gyms, and for some styles, cable crossover gyms. All of them have cable and swivel pulley designs in common, as well as adjustable height settings for the pulley start positions, and rotating handles for 3-dimensional movements. Some towers have up to 30 different start positions from low to high. There is one selectorized stack per tower with the total weight of plates ranging from 100 to 200 pounds. Some of the best functional training gyms reviewed on this site are made by Body Solid and Star Trac.

Why is it Called Functional?

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A trainer should provide you with at least 20 to 30 different exercises that will work most of the muscles groups of the body all along the kinetic chain used in movement.

Pro and Cons

Design: functional trainers come in two basic styles. The frame will have either one or two cable towers and the unit will fit in a corner or against a wall. The frame is tall and compact; their advantage is that they don’t take up the kind of space a multi-station gym does.

Range of Motion: functional gyms provide a full range of movement mimicking what you experience with free weights. The 3-dimensional exercises recruit many muscle groups, from the stabilizer muscles in the body’s core, to the arms and shoulders, as well as the legs.

Constant Tension: a cable exercise puts muscles under constant tension as the weight is lifted and then lowered (as opposed to free weights where it is possible to use momentum to swing the dumbbell or barbell rather than lift correctly). Advanced lifters use these training gyms to effectively isolate and add detail to “showy” muscle groups such as the biceps.

A weakness or con of functional trainers is in lower body training. These are fine machines for flies, rows, pulldowns, crunches, bicep curls, and such, but pale in comparison with multi-gyms that provide leg press and extension/curl stations. While the low pulley can be used for kickouts and kickbacks, working with an ankle cuff strap attached to the cable doesn’t compare to exercises with free weights or on machines. The ankle strap can put stress on the knee and cause injury, which is why many people avoid this type of exercise preferring to work the legs through lunges and other bodyweight routines.

While some people love the ease and comfort of functional training gyms, there are also newbies who find cable gyms to be more complicated to workout on than using fixed arm gyms that are pulled and pushed along one fixed plane of movement. They have trouble with their stance and figuring out how to isolate the parts of the body they want to work on. Most functional trainers ship with a DVD instructional video and a chart of exercises, so it is best to review the materials to get the results you seek.

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