The newly issued Military Sports Training Outline in 2025 will for the first time incorporate functional training into our military sports training system. In response to the common problem of joint dysfunction among officers and soldiers, functional training courses have been specifically set up for ankle, knee, waist, hip and other areas in the basic physical fitness section to guide officers and soldiers in strengthening joints and preventing training injuries. Physical fitness is the 'ticket' to the battlefield. Military sports play an important role in strengthening the physical fitness of officers and soldiers, consolidating military morale, and supporting preparations for war, and are widely valued by armies around the world. The newly issued Military Sports Training Outline has reformed the content of military sports training throughout the army, established a modern military sports training model, promoted the transformation of military sports training from focusing on healthy physical fitness to focusing on combat physical fitness, and increased the contribution rate to the combat effectiveness of the troops. So, what exactly is functional training? Functional training originated in the field of sports rehabilitation, initially designed as a training method to assist athletes in their recovery. Later, it gradually evolved into a professional training method to improve training performance and athletic achievements. Functional training emphasizes the collaborative work of multiple joints and muscle groups, and enhances the body's functionality and stability by simulating movement patterns in real-world environments such as pushing, pulling, squatting, and lifting. This training method aims to enhance the athletic performance, coordination, stability, and core control abilities of officers and soldiers in various environments. Simply put, functional training is the use of specific training methods to enable a certain part or whole of the body to perform certain training actions or tasks more effectively, thereby improving the training performance and physical abilities of officers and soldiers. Unlike traditional single muscle group training, functional training focuses on the coordination and balance of the overall movement chain, emphasizing multidimensional and multi joint movements. Why introduce functional training? Firstly, due to social progress and modern convenient lifestyles, some officers and soldiers have varying degrees of functional deficiencies in sports, which affect the effectiveness of military sports training. For example, some officers and soldiers have uneven development of upper limb strength, with one arm thick and the other thin, and significant differences in muscle strength on both sides. They may encounter certain difficulties during exercises such as pull ups and push ups. Secondly, insufficient physical flexibility and muscle and ligament strength around joints can increase the risk of injury for officers and soldiers during military training. For example, if officers and soldiers accidentally fall during running training, it may cause anterior cruciate ligament tear, which is due to insufficient muscle strength around the knee joint, as well as inadequate body coordination and flexibility. The newly issued "Military Sports Training Outline" integrates and selects five functional training courses, including ankle and calf, knee joint, waist and hip, shoulder and neck, wrist, elbow and arm, to help officers and soldiers improve the quality of training movements, taking into account the common training injury sites of officers and soldiers in the comprehensive army, as well as the regional correlation and power chain of human joints. How can functional training be better utilized with the help of the Military Sports Training Outline? The functional training course includes four aspects: soft tissue relaxation, muscle stretching, stability training, and functional strength enhancement. Each course selects the best actions from these four aspects, each containing 14-18 actions. The movements of functional training courses are designed according to the entire chain, and there are many training contents for a complete course. Officers and soldiers can choose targeted training according to their needs. For example, soft tissue relaxation and muscle stretching can be performed during preparation and organization activities, while stability exercises and functional strength exercises can serve as auxiliary exercises for specialized training and strength training. What are the characteristics of functional training designed in the Military Sports Training Outline? Firstly, it focuses on action practice. The main purpose of functional training is to improve the nervous system's ability to control muscles, focusing mainly on movements rather than muscles, as movements are the external result of the comprehensive performance of various physical qualities in the human body. Functional training covers compound movements in the three dimensions of forward, backward, left, right, and rotation in sports training, avoiding single movement training and making it more scientific. Secondly, it emphasizes the entire chain of motion. Functional training is mainly aimed at the comprehensive development of strength in each link of the entire sports chain, and enables them to coordinate and smoothly connect. During the training process, it is possible to identify the weak areas of the trainees and provide targeted reinforcement training to prevent and reduce training injuries. Again, it pursues multidimensional and multi joint training. Functional training breaks through the traditional single joint strength training mode, emphasizing multidimensional and coordinated performance between multiple joints, thereby improving training effectiveness. Functional training enhances the coordinated movement of various muscles and joints, by recruiting and activating participating muscles to quickly coordinate, thereby improving the muscle strength, explosiveness, and flexibility of officers and soldiers. Finally, functional training can also be tailored to the actual needs of officers and soldiers, with diverse training methods presented. Officers and soldiers can choose personalized training programs based on their age and physical fitness, which also makes functional training more closely related to actual combat. It is worth mentioning that functional training can also serve as a supplementary means to traditional strength training, especially in solving chronic pain, improving training performance, and breaking training bottlenecks, which have unique advantages. Through more scientific movement patterns and training methods in functional training, such as anti rotation core training, officers and soldiers can improve their posture and enhance muscle strength. This may bring new breakthroughs for those officers and soldiers who encounter bottlenecks in traditional strength training. Functional training actually does not require spending a long time on complex exercises. Generally speaking, 2-3 times a week is sufficient. Among them, the 5 types of action patterns can be trained together in one training session, or only one or a few parts of them can be trained in a targeted manner. Functional training focuses on movement patterns rather than individual muscles, with a focus on achieving balance between push and pull forces and overall strength enhancement, thereby improving athletic performance and reducing the incidence of training injuries. Functional training does not require complex training equipment, and dumbbells and water bottles at hand can be used as training tools. Military sports training is like a long and arduous journey, and functional training is the booster of the journey. A fully evaluated, personalized, and scientifically reasonable functional training plan can make military physical training for officers and soldiers smoother and more effective. (New Society)