Why do squats help you improve your vertical? Why do people perform exercises on a Swiss ball, and does this help to reduce injury and improve performance? Why should an athlete train their “core.”
The answers to these questions are related a concept called Specificity. Understanding this concept is critical. It will reveal whether a program is well designed or designed to fail. While the concepts are not difficult to grasp, using them to analyze a training program will be shocking! So let’s get right into this important concept!
Specificity relates to how an exercise translates into the sport performance. According to several prominent Strength and Conditioning Coaches 1-4 several key factors must occur if an exercise will translate into sport performance:
1) motor coordination
2) mechanics
3) energetics
1.1 Motor Coordination
Motor Coordination looks at how the brain controls the muscles to produce a desired movement. Intuitively, there is no better exercise that can improve sport performance than practicing the sport itself. But often we must perform an exercise that does not look like the sport to improve sport performance.
EXCUSE ME???
We’ve all done when learning a skill. We break the skill into individual components, and practice the individual skills. If we did this properly our overall skill should improve. This is also true when we develop qualities and then perform the sport. For example, we know that vertical jump is correlated with agility, acceleration, and skating performance. So if we improve vertical jump we can also improve our agility, acceleration and skating performance. Keep this in mind because this concept is very important.
Unfortunately, many are fooled into thinking that just because an exercise looks like the sport it will translate into improved sport performance. Perhaps there is no better example than “balance exercises” or “labile training” and “sport specific conditioning.”
We’ve all seen this. An athlete standing on a disc, a wobble board, a Swiss ball, or a Bosu ball with the intent of performing a strength and conditioning movement or sport specific skill. Many people would look at this is and say wow this is a great exercise. Not only does it look like the skill we are trying to improve, but it is also more challenging.
There is absolutely ZERO evidence to support this concept. In fact, studies that have examined this concept and have shown ZERO improvement with this type of approach for improving sport performance. Where evidence exists, is dealing with ankle sprain rehab and post knee surgical rehab where there is a loss of balance control (or what is improperly termed in the media and by many strength and conditioning professionals as prioprioception). Sport performance and rehab are completely different. Do not be fooled or waste your time with these approaches. They do not work for the mechanisms they propose.
Other key points to remember about motor coordination can be summarized below:
- Motor coordination is dependent on velocity
- Motor coordination can be altered based on injury
- There are many methods to coordinate sub maximal efforts but few for maximal effort.
1.2 Mechanics
Mechanics examines how forces develop in the exercise compared to the sport itself. For example let’s compare two scenarios, an athlete going to spike volleyball and an offensive lineman in the NFL. The volleyball athlete will emphasize rate of force development within the explosive response period to jump as high as possible whereas an offense lineman in the NFL will develop maximal strength to engage and hold a defensive opponent. Understanding the rate of force development, or the acceleration profile of the sport is very important 5. It is beyond the scope of this guide to explain the importance of the acceleration profile, but please read the blog to find out more information as it becomes available.
All this being said, how the rate of force development occurs in the exercise has been shown to influence performance in the sport itself 5-9. We talked at length about the difference between power, force and rate of force development in the first section of this guide. Loading according to develop specific qualities in your sport is incredibly important. For most sports this requires an emphasis on developing power and your reactive abilities.
1.3 Energetics
Energetics examines the energy demands of the sport.
During sport there are times where we have short explosive activities, followed by periods of coasting. The profile of all the movements, between high intensity or high powered movements with low powered movements (and movements in between) determines the energy or physiological demands of the sport. We call this the energy profile of the sport or activity. We determine this by performing time motion analysis.
1.4 Choosing Exercises
With respect to specificity some exercises will focus on one factor; while others will address multiple factors. Individual exercises are not as important as the periodized combination of the exercises. This will determine if our programs will translate into improved performance. That being said, we must understand how each exercise fits into our overall development of the skill. We must make efficient use of our time and our ability to perform quality work to make sure each rep counts. Without question, most programs fail terribly in their ability to sequence and prioritize exercises to improve performance.
1. Siff M. Supertraining Supertraining Institute; 2003.
2. Zatsiorsky VM. Science and Practice of Strength Training. Toronto: Human Kinetics Publishers 1995.
3. Plisk S, Gray J. Foundations in Sports Mastery Paper presented at: Sports Mastery, 2007.
4. Stone MH, Stone M, Sands WA. Principles and Practice of Resistance Training. Toronto: Human Kinetics; 2007.
5. Andersen LL, Andersen JL, Magnusson SP, et al. Changes in the human muscle force-velocity relationship in response to resistance training and subsequent detraining. J Appl Physiol. Jul 2005;99(1):87-94.
6. Cormie P, McCaulley GO, McBride JM. Power versus strength-power jump squat training: influence on the load-power relationship. Med Sci Sports Exerc. Jun 2007;39(6):996-1003.
7. Carlock JM, Smith SL, Hartman MJ, et al. The relationship between vertical jump power estimates and weightlifting ability: a field-test approach. J Strength Cond Res. Aug 2004;18(3):534-539.
8. Fry AC, Schilling BK, Staron RS, Hagerman FC, Hikida RS, Thrush JT. Muscle fiber characteristics and performance correlates of male Olympic-style weightlifters. J Strength Cond Res. Nov 2003;17(4):746-754.
9. Tricoli V, Lamas L, Carnevale R, Ugrinowitsch C. Short-term effects on lower-body functional power development: weightlifting vs. vertical jump training programs. J Strength Cond Res. May 2005;19(2):433-437.
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