I Tried Functional Patterns for 2 Years — Here's My Honest Review

I spent about two to three years deep in Functional Patterns when I was stuck in chronic hip and shoulder pain. I completed their 10-week course multiple times, trained in person at their Seattle headquarters for four to six months, and I fully bought in.

This isn't some engagement hit piece. It's an honest breakdown of what happened — what I think Functional Patterns gets right, what I think they get wrong, and how you can decide if the system is worth your time without wasting years like I did.

Some quick context: I've been in the rehab and training world for about 15 years. I'm a licensed physical therapist assistant and a certified strength and conditioning specialist. I've been the practitioner working with clients, and I've been the desperate person stuck in chronic pain willing to try anything. I know both sides of this.

I go into more detail in the full video above.

What Functional Patterns Actually Is

If you're new to it, Functional Patterns is a training system that emphasizes gait mechanics, rotation, and full-body integration. It uses a lot of cable exercises designed to mimic human movement patterns rather than traditional lifting like squats, bench press, and so on. It was created by Naudi Aguilar and is marketed heavily toward people dealing with pain, posture issues, and movement dysfunction.

I originally found it through their marketing when I was injured and extremely frustrated. I couldn't bench, my hip hurt, my shoulder hurt, and nothing felt like it was actually fixing me. When you've been in pain long enough and you've been to enough chiropractors and physical therapists, you'll try anything.

How Deep I Went

I started by purchasing the 10-week course around 2017-2018 and completed it upwards of three times. That led me to training in person at their Seattle headquarters (before they moved to Hawaii), doing one to two sessions a week for about four to six months. On top of the in-person sessions, I was doing a ton of the homework outside of training.

So when I say I gave this system a fair shot — I mean it. This wasn't a casual dabble.

What I Got From It

I want to be fair. There are things I did learn from Functional Patterns.

I picked up some useful concepts around controlling pelvis position, especially posterior pelvic tilts. Their plank variations from the 10-week course were helpful for understanding how to get out of anterior pelvic tilt and some of the extension patterns I didn't realize I had. That awareness actually served me well later when I got into Postural Restoration Institute work.

I also learned some of their conditioning-style exercises — mace work, medicine ball activities. They're athletic, engaging, and I still use some of them in circuit-style training with clients.

But ultimately, I went to Functional Patterns to get out of pain, correct my posture, and function better overall. And I can't say any of that meaningfully improved. It didn't get dramatically worse either. It just didn't change in the way I was hoping — and paying — for.

Meanwhile, my strength and muscle were dropping because I had basically stopped all lifting. Which brings me to the bigger problem.

The Dogma That Kept Me Stuck

My issue with Functional Patterns wasn't that they have unusual exercises. My issue was the dogma I absorbed while I was deep in the system.

Their claims that traditional lifting ruins your mechanics. That machines are bad. That if you do anything outside of the Functional Patterns system, you'll reinforce dysfunction and lead yourself to a life of pain and poor posture. That mindset kept me stuck. It made me scared to train normally. It made me feel like my body was fragile and broken, and that I had to do everything perfectly or I would completely regress.

When you're desperate for pain relief, you'll accept trades you shouldn't accept — like giving up strength training entirely because you're chasing a promise. That was my first hard lesson.

The Before-and-After Problem

A lot of Functional Patterns' marketing relies on posture before-and-after photos. And this is something that really bothered me.

Most of those transformations are active posing — someone bracing, holding tension, stacking themselves intentionally for the photo. If you can look better when you're actively thinking about it and forcing it, that doesn't automatically mean lasting change. A real change shows up when you're relaxed, not thinking about your posture, and just living your normal life.

Actively holding a posture for a photo is the same thing as flexing your muscles when you pose — it makes you look way more jacked than you actually are when you're relaxed. In my estimation, 95% of those before-and-afters are essentially posing.

The Claims That Don't Add Up

You also hear claims from Functional Patterns about isolating fascia or very specific tissue targeting. I was always a bit skeptical, but I kept going through the motions anyway. We can't perfectly isolate individual muscles, so when a system sells ultra-specific promises that don't match basic physiology, I think skepticism is warranted.

And on a personal level — being deep in Functional Patterns content, watching a lot of Naudi's videos and live streams consistently, it just made me rigid. I remember my wife (girlfriend at the time) telling me that after I'd finish watching a live stream, I'd act like a completely different person. The system made me extremely rigid and egotistical. I was looking down my nose at anyone who wasn't doing FP, even though I wasn't seeing results myself. It was tribalism — a way to justify why I was still doing it when it wasn't working.

That might be partially my personality at the time. Maybe I didn't have enough of my own identity, so I made Functional Patterns part of it. But I wasn't a better person for it.

Could Functional Patterns Help Someone?

Yes, absolutely. I know people exist who've gotten results from it. I can't say all of their before-and-afters are garbage.

If you love complex movements with conditioning, you enjoy rotational work, and you want coaching cues around gait and posture — maybe it's for you. If you're looking for a community with that kind of intensity, it might appeal to you.

But if you're coming in mainly for pain relief and you want to get stronger, build muscle, and live pain-free long-term, I don't think Functional Patterns should replace the basics.

Here's my benchmark: if a system is legit, you should see measurable progress in four to eight weeks. Pain reduction, increased functional strength, improved capacity — things you can actually track. That's not what I was finding.

The most objective thing we measured during my time was sprint speed on a Woodway treadmill. And yeah, it was cool to see. But I'd leave an hour-and-a-half session, Venmo my trainer, walk uphill, and still have a hip pinch that was extremely triggering psychologically. I just wanted to be jacked and pain-free, and it wasn't helping.

What Actually Helped

What finally got me out of chronic pain wasn't any magic system. Even PRI didn't completely fix me. What worked was smart strength training I could actually progress on, basic conditioning, and improving mobility at the specific joints that were giving me trouble. I used breathing exercises as a tool — not as a religion.

A training system or continuing education certification should serve you and your current lifestyle. We all come from different places with different needs and time constraints. Having to completely buy into a system and change almost everything about your life just isn't realistic — and it's not something you need to do to be a functioning, strong, pain-free person.

The Bottom Line

I don't regret learning some pieces of Functional Patterns. But I do regret how long I stayed in it, hoping the next phase would be some kind of breakthrough. I lost muscle, I lost real functional strength — pushing, squatting, just feeling strong — and I turned into someone I didn't like.

A few things I'd leave you with:

Don't let Functional Patterns (or any system) replace the basics of strength and mobility. Don't let marketing convince you that you're broken and that every decision outside the system will make you worse. And don't outsource your confidence or self-worth to a training methodology. This goes beyond Functional Patterns — it applies to anything. Your confidence comes from you.

If you've tried Functional Patterns, I'm genuinely curious what your experience was. And if you're stuck in pain right now and unsure what to do next, check out some of my other content — I've been exactly where you are.

Not Sure Where to Start?

If you're dealing with chronic pain, postural issues, or movement limitations and you want an honest assessment of what's going on — not a sales pitch for a system — I offer a free posture and mobility assessment where we can talk through your specific situation.

You can also check out the WaughFit app for structured training programs built around the same test-mobilize-load approach that actually got me out of pain.

This post is based on my YouTube video "I Tried Functional Patterns for 2 Years, Here's What Actually Happened." Watch the full breakdown above or on my YouTube channel.