The School of Fitness - Lesson 8 - Get Specific or Get Nowhere
Mr Delia Steele
Below we are going to explain how it's essential to specialise. And generalise. But in order to specialise.
This is one of the key principles of fitness. On the one hand, it's pretty obvious. On the other hand, you mustn't forget it & you mustn't take it too far. This is a mere intro but we will return to this rule on many occasions as the school of fitness progresses:
The principle of specificity or SAID principle (Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands) states that your body will adapt to the specific demands placed upon it. If you want strong arms, train your arms. If you want to be faster, train for speed. If you want endurance, train for endurance. If you want to do more chin ups...
There is no "fitness". There is only fit for a specific purpose. If you define what you want, you can go out and get it.
You can't be great at everything. This is why decathletes can't win all 10 events they compete in separately, they are nearly always defeated by the events many specialists. When training, its best to set your priorities and focus your programme around that as best as you can.
The classic example here is to state that a marathon runners training programme will be very different to that of a 100m sprinter....told you it was obvious.
Your body doesn't want to be confused. Too much variety in your training will be counterproductive. It just wants you shut up, stop messing around and tell it exactly what you want it to do, what you want it to be good at and how you want it to adapt. Failing to come to terms with this often leaves many amateur gym rats lost and confused, with nothing but stinking gym kit and the same old physique to show for their efforts.
SO TO APPLY THIS...
If you want to pack on muscle - you need to train with weights to increase the volume of work you can do in the correct range. This means that the majority of work you do would be aimed at increasing the weight and reps you can perform with good technique in the 5-10 range (if you use a conventional set/rep scheme).
There is plenty of crossover here, but to keep things simple for now, if you work on increasing your volume in this range your body is going to adapt to cope with it by growing bigger muscles. Bingo.
If you want strength - you need to get as many muscle fibres and especially as many of your bigger faster stronger muscle fibres excited as you can. Training for strength will build some muscle, but primarily its about the nervous system, the skill of squeezing as much force from your muscles as you can.
This means training with heavy weights you can only lift 1-5 times. Any lighter and your maximal strength is not likely to increase (you build endurance not strength).
If you want speed - You need to train F_s_. (fill the blanks like hangman). Or at least train with the intention of moving heavy weights very quickly - baring in mind if they are heavy enough they won't necessarily move that quickly even if you try.
If you want to shift fat and get lean - your goal shouldn't be to train like a powerlifters. You need to train in order to cause maximum disturbance to your system.
If you want endurance - you need to target primarily your slow twitch fibres that have the capacity to last longer than the stronger more powerful fast twitch muscle fibres. Being stronger and More-Athletic as a whole may help you, but the majority of your training needs to be based around getting the miles in.
BUT YOU MAY NEED TO GENERALISE BEFORE YOU SPECIALISE
As with all in fitness, it's never quite as simple as it seems. The SAID principle has lead to many folks misguidedly doing things that seem specific to their activity but aren't actually, and may be counterproductive.
For example, grabbing a cable machine and mimicking a golf swing may sound like a good idea as it's 'sport specific' but on closer inspection you may realise that you could be overworking already overused muscles and not actually helping your swing at all. It's a bit stupid.
For nearly all athletes, spending time to develop whole body strength and athleticism is necessary in order to maximise the benefits of training sports specific movements. This helps to protect against injury and develop muscles that can be trained for a specific purpose. Just because you want to punch harder, it doesn't mean that punching is all you should do to optimise punching power.
The more horsepower the athlete has and the better the athlete functions, the more raw material that can be trained to moved quickly and accurately for the purpose. Whatever your sport, first get More-Athletic, then aim at the action you need to be good at.
This is usually much more advantageous than seeking to mimic sporting movements with weights.
Take home: your body adapts to the SPECIFIC demands it faces. This principle needs to be at the heart of everything you do in training. Make sure your training matches up to your goal as closely as possible but don't forget you may need to generalise in order to specialise.
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