Specificity and Why it is Important in Training

I believe general health is the most important thing for people to pursue through their training and nutrition and should be promoted endlessly, however, for people with specific goals or needs, specificity is important. This is a post about what I have learned and why I believe that specificity in training should always be applied as well as considerations regarding this application.

Altering the loads you put on your body, your recovery in and out of your session, the types of mobility and cognitive training you do, training modality, and several other factors all have an impact on what you specifically improve on and how your performance is affected. When we teach athletes to practice their skills, we teach them to “train like you play” and “focus on the fundamentals”. We also give them drills that relate specifically to their strengths and weaknesses as well as the requirements placed on that individual based on their sport, position, and role on the team.

This all makes sense. Why would we train a basketball player by getting them to kick the football? We wouldn’t, however, we need to look to apply these same principles to our strength training and athletic development. 

Just like we wouldn’t get this basketball athlete to train for hours a day kicking a football, someone who wants to run a marathon shouldn’t spend ALL their time doing sprint training, and someone who wants to get more power for their sport shouldn’t be ONLY lifting heavy weights slowly. The training methods they use should reflect the outcome they want. Often we see (and I have definitely been a culprit of this) people falling into doing the same exercises week in and week out and then wondering why they can’t jump higher, run faster, etc. It’s because your input/stimulus did not reflect the output/adaptation you were seeking.

The goals and needs of the athlete should be taken into consideration when forming a program for them. Build on their strengths and work on their weaknesses. Look at what they should work on given their sport, position, and role on the team. What kinds of movements are they required to complete? What kind of injury/strain is likely to be put on their body and how can we reduce that? What are their long term goals in and out of sport?

There is still nuance to this though. When you have someone on a program designed for them and their goals, there are going to be multiple components to it. For the individual looking to develop power, they also need to ensure that they continue to develop their base level of strength. They will also likely have exercises included which focus on reducing their risk of injury by strengthening the muscles around joints which are at risk and focusing on other sport-specific common issues. 

They will also have different periods specifically working on different goals/variables. If an athlete worked only on developing power with their resistance training for 52 weeks a year, they likely would see fewer results than if they had various blocks of strength, power, and hypertrophy. Changing their specific inputs over this period

Also, we need to ensure that the athlete still enjoys their training because their adherence to the program is the most important variable. If the athlete enjoys 5km runs but the most consecutive distance they run in their sport is 16 meters, then they can go for a longer distance run once in a while. While this likely wouldn’t be the main or ideal stimulus, there are still many benefits to the run and the athlete is going to be more likely to continue their training, which ultimately is a win.

This “enjoyment factor” would be the equivalent of a basketball athlete playing football with their friends or even in a team in addition to their basketball. While it might reduce the ideal amount of time they can work on sport-specific skills, if it makes them happy and doesn’t impact them negatively, there would be no reason for them not to do what they enjoy.

Essentially, it is important that if you are someone who is training for reasons more than you just want to improve their health and keep fit, specificity is important. This is whether you are looking for specific sporting goals or you have just general athletic goals for yourself (e.g. I want to improve my bench press). You need to be specific to your goals because your inputs are what are going to change your outputs. This should be done while also allowing for other exercises that you enjoy around your specific training, as without adherence, all the specificity in the world won’t help you achieve your desired results.

There are multiple components to your training if you want to improve your performance, and we are learning more about this every day (I know I am at least). I believe that specificity in training is one the most important of these and it (with enough thought) is relatively straight forward to achieve. All in all, do the type of training that best works towards your goals and then train hard to achieve them.