The Myth of Sport Specific Training
I love it! I love the idea of people training like athletes and more and more people are jumping on board on this idea. However, it also means that there are a lot of people that may be prone to the same mistake A LOT of athletes make.
“Sport-specific” a word a lot of people like to throw around but very few understanding what it means. I have plenty of coaches from all different types of sports asking me if I have a program specific to their sport? I understand why they are asking, most sports programs out there are made only for sports like football. Heck, there are a lot more sports out there than just football!
However, making a specific program for just about any sport really isn’t as necessary as people may think. It starts with the young athletes, the ugly truth is that so many young people (yes, even the athletic ones) are so grossly out of shape and have huge muscle imbalances that even attempting to make a sport specific program impossible!
Unlike many of the Eastern European countries that popularized “sport-specific” training programs in the 70’s and 80’s most modern athletes are not brought up in a very systemized program that takes the progression from young to adult athletes.
So, what should someone do? People are going to the complete opposite side to trying to do all types of activities, many that have absolutely NOTHING to do with their development of any fitness qualities. Yes, this type of training can be just as detrimental as much as the pseudo sport specific programs. Why? So much time and effort can be devoted to trying to develop fitness skills that have no carryover.
What to do? After you identify your goals and what is meaningful to you, start performing drills that will help get you there. For most people building a foundation of good movement of fundamental movement patterns. Yes, having a balance in movement goes a long ways into the all around fitness that so many people want..
See some of these training programs:
Day1:
Power Lower Body Bilateral
Strength Vertical Pressing
Single Leg Strength
Endurance Vertical Pulling
Rotational Core Training
Day 2:
Single Leg Power Training
Strength Horizontal Pulling
Strength Lower Body Bilateral
Endurance Horizontal Pushing
Anti-Flexion Drills
Day 3:
Strength Lower Body Bilateral
Strength Upper Body Vertical Pulling
Single Leg Stability
Shoulder Stability
Trunk Flexion Drills
A fun way to combine these drills is this weeks video of the day!
Related posts:
- A Great Sport-Specific Debate Having people write in with thoughts and ideas is the...
- Science isn’t a four letter word You mention the word science and people have a...
- The Seinfeld Rule Yes, like most people I loved Seinfeld. One of...
- Sandbag Training For Athletes Part 1 This is an article that will be posting on a...
- You’re Doing It All Wrong! A HUGE part of our L.I.F.T. program is trying...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
R. St-Onge
Hi Josh,
I just read this article and wanted to share my opinion with you. Although i support your notion that a well rounded workout plan is better than no plan at all, especially if your goals are sports performance related, I feel that you kind of left out a proper explanation as to WHAT a sports specific exercise program should be defined as. For example, if basketball is your sport, there will be much emphasis on leg strengthening, sprinting and vertical jumping. If you take my discipline, ice hockey goalie, my focus will be on leg strength and explosive lateral displacements, just as i need to perform in the crease to square up to the shot. And of course, adding in some upper body and core movements to balance it all out is necessary.
So it is my belief that there IS such a thing as “sports specific” training – it just needs to be defined properly.
BTW, cool site! Keep fit.
Regards,
Rich
Josh Henkin
Rich,
There definitely is such a thing as sport-specific training, however, it is not what people generally think it is and it is the timing of the sport-specific training that is crucial. Many athletes believe they need to spend a considerable amount of time in a SPP phase (specialized physical preparation), however, depending upon their training age and skill level, this may or may not be the case. Many especially younger athletes need a more extensive GPP (general physical preparation phase) than SPP, yet, this is often not how programs are implemented.
I think all sports and all people need leg strength and explosiveness in all planes. However, the level of these qualities is going to vary again on training age and how we define such attributes. We need to separate skill development from strength & conditioning programs, while they impact each other they are not the same.
True sport-specific training takes into account moments of force development with specific joint angles. It takes into account the different types of strength during different phases of movement. So, it is an incredibly complicated form of training. Taking your basketball player example, what you mentioned are GENERAL attributes of sporting development. One could make the same commentary about leg strengthening, sprinting, and vertical jumping in regards to just about any power/speed sport. What would be sport-specific would be examining the joint angles of jumping for a rebound versus going in for a lay-up. While these are both jumping examples, they vary greatly in the nature of how one would train because of differing joint angles and peak force development at different moments.
What most sport-specific training programs are programs that train functional movement patterns and combine that with times of skill development. This is not bad at all, in fact, probably very appropriate for many athletes. Yet, it really isn’t sport-specific as I have seen numerous examples of basketball players training with soccer players for example and to be honest, they both benefit from the training. However, again, it isn’t really sport-specific. Good post though.
Josh Henkin
Thanks Stefanie, what you said was the heart of my post. We really can’t apply sport-specific training without a very strong foundation. We live in a society that even has their athletes that are very healthy and at time out of shape. We don’t have the ability to get everyone into organized, periodized training systems that such concepts really have their roots.