Even more, if the athlete desires to continue to improve her sport performance, these qualities must be continuously enhanced by overloading specific modalities in the weight room (particularly via force magnitude, rates of force development, and power). These enhancements are best achieved in accordance with the athlete’s sport season to ensure the adaptations elicited through training optimally match the current needs of the athlete. For instance, in off-season or preparation training, more time should be spent in higher volume, lower intensity movements to provide an optimal hypertrophic stimulus. This type of training allows for greater muscle cross sectional area as well as denser tendons and ligaments to help reduce the chance of future injury (2,3,5). As an athlete approaches her pre-competition season, heavier loads stimulate her body to increase its strength and force outputs (2,3,5). As competition season approaches, modalities that are high intensity, fast velocity, and lower volume optimally stimulate the athlete to use her newly developed strength and express it as power on the field or court (2,3,5).
Without this key element, training just isn’t quite as personal. Specificity is one of the most important elements in client training programs and a big part of helping them to reach their goals, whether it be training for a sport, losing weight, or working on improving activities of daily living. What is Specificity Training?Specificity in training is essentially training in a manner that is applicable, appropriate and course-specific in order to produce the desired outcome. For example, if a client is working with you to improve their running abilities, you need to prescribe movements that will help to directly improve their form, gate, cadence, and speed. Just like anything else in life, practice is the key to improving performance. More importantly, specific practice improves performance. This means that if your clients want to improve on a specific exercise or skill, they need to perform that exercise or skill. Your running clients can perform squats and lunges all day, but if they don’t also run, then they won’t see improvements. Although specificity training should be a ‘no brainer,’ for your clients, it may not be as simple as it sounds. Your client may have the mindset that any exercise is good exercise. Although that mentality isn’t a bad one to have, if they have specific goals for their bodies, they need to be specific in how they execute the steps to reaching that goal. Why Specificity Training?1. Being specific in your training will help you and your clients to keep your goals in mind during every aspect of training. Remember, these goals need to be SMART- Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. 2. Being specific in your training will help you to better accommodate your client’s interests. Not all clients needing to increase their muscular strength and endurance will enjoy Olympic lifting; maybe they really love circuit training instead. Being specific also means being individualized. Keep your client’s interests in mind. 3. Being specific in your training will help to prevent injuries by tailoring your exercise prescriptions to your client’s initial fitness level. As time goes on, your client’s specific training program will guide them to preventing injuries in their exercises in the long run. 4. Being specific in your training will help your clients to reach their goals in a more timely and high-quality manner. Specificity will make for less time wasted on exercises that won’t improve their goals or skills. This ensures the time you do spend will be of the highest quality for their goals or skills. 5. Being specific in your training will help to build confidence in your client’s individual abilities. Not all bodies are created alike, and now more than ever it is as easy as hopping on to Instagram or Facebook to find someone with the “ideal” figure to compare to. Your client may struggle with comparing themselves with celebrities, their friends or even you, but being specific with their programming will help them to realize exactly how remarkable they are as an individual. Use the specificity of their program to point out their unique goals, strengths, abilities, and interests. [info type=”facebook”]Do you have more ideas about Specificity Training? If you’re NFPT certified, join the Facebook Community Group, it’s where trainers like you get connected and share thoughts. If you’re not certified with NFPT, come chat with us here![/info]
The principle of specificity means that adaptations to training are specific to the training. Specificity applies to the muscle group trained, the speed of training, the intensity of training, the movements of training and the energy systems utilised. Specificity is that physiological adaptations only occur in response to the stress placed on the body and only to the sections that experience this stress. Specificity means if you participate in an aerobic sport such as marathon running, you need to do aerobic training that involves running so that your adaptations improve your performance in that sport. Training should be done at a pace and in an environment that best replicates competition in order to get the best specific gains or adaptations for competition. Continuous training, such as running outside, becomes the best method because it specifically reflects the marathon sport. Specificity when applied to resistance training requires that the muscle groups used in the sport are the ones trained. Training should also seek to replicate similar movements from the sport at a similar speed. Strength training for swimming would then use a lat pull-down to replicate the pulling movement of swimming, at the most efficient swimming movement speed to increase strength at that speed for that movement in swimming.
The Halcyon Days Do you remember those days of your youth, when the world was a place of limitless possibility? Did you want to be an astronaut? A doctor? A professional athlete? Those early passions developed a level of intent. If you wanted to be a doctor, you played doctor. If you wanted to be an athlete, you played sports. These desires led to specific learning actions. To play baseball, you need to learn how to throw. If you wanted to be Ken Griffey, Jr., you would need to learn how to hit left-handed. Over time, the specifics of your activity led to ability. The books you read about being a doctor informed your schoolwork. The pick-up ballgames translated into time spent on the high school diamond. These occurrences are no guarantee of future success, of course. We all have specific talents and our desire to become a professional baseball player does not mean we will become a professional baseball player. But specific actions do lead to better results — that’s why experience matters in the job market. The more you do something, the better you become at the specific tasks. This principle applies to our training. It seems the further we move away from those days of playing in the yard, the more theoretical our training becomes. For example, you might run 5 miles a day, not because you want to be a runner, but because you want to connect with the idea of fitness. But specificity of training matters. What is specificity of training? It is training that is relevant and appropriate to the sport or functional task in order to produce the best effect. Specificity of training means taking the extra step from general training. It means you should continue to run 5 miles a day, but also include exercises that apply to your desired outcomes. In sports, it means if you want to be a good rock climber, you need to rock climb. But in everyday life, it also means if you want to climb the stairs in your office or at home, you need to climb stairs. There are several key components of any training program. The most important are the volume (how much), the intensity of training (how hard), and the frequency (how often). These three variables determine the adaptive changes that either enhance fitness or decrease exercise capacity. We can further modify these components by altering the variables of motion, force and time. Motion can be modified to best mirror the motions needed for the activity or sport you wish to participate in. Motion can be further leveraged by altering the range of motion you work through. Full range, partial range, end range…my exercises should mimic the motion demands of the task. Intensity is modified by altering the load or resistance utilized. The resistance can be heavy or light; it can be applied by different modalities and applied to different regions of the body. Finally, time can be altered. Exercises can be performed with high reps or low reps; it can be done fast or slow. It can be performed in short bursts of effort or in longer durations. Interestingly enough, probably the most specific thing about exercise training is one the books and articles never mention. It has to do with what is most important to you in regard to exercise. In the end, the best exercise is the one you will do. You may not be doing the kind of exercise that best suits you, according to the book The Eight Colors of Fitness by Suzanne Brue. Her research suggests that your personality affects how you think and feel about exercise. Knowing your likes and dislikes will help you choose the workouts and sports that are more likely to keep you interested and involved. Exercise should be specific to you particular wants and desires. Finally, when looking at an exercise program, it is important to think about the end results. Exercise can vary on a spectrum from easy to hard, and from very generic to very specific. If your program is too generic and too easy, it will seem like a waste of time. If it is too generic and too hard, you may find it punishing. If it is too hard and too specific, it may become harmful. And if it is too easy and too specific, it becomes boring. The sweet spot is at the confluence of these parameters where it is “just right” for you. Why does specificity matter? Research suggests that the adaptations of your muscles are dependent upon the specific tasks employed. In other words, highly general training helps you in a highly general way. But specific training helps you in a specific way. It means you should reconsider your training and to remember those days of your youth when learning to pitch meant throwing a baseball and learning to swim like the Olympians meant swimming in a pool. Specificity of training does not mean a just-do-it attitude. Each person has unique movements and part of training means a conditioning toward the proper way of achieving your task. In other words, if you throw a baseball with bad mechanics and condition your muscles to those mechanics, your training might be more harmful than good. Specificity of training, instead, means to train well on your specifics tasks, so you can perform better when the time comes. Most of all we want you to be able to use and apply these new changes directly to the environments and tasks that you encounter on a daily basis. That is what we mean by functional transfer. What task are you trying to achieve? Let us help you work toward specificity in your training! |