Sport Specific Training vs. Core Fitness & Strength Training

by admin on June 10, 2010 · 3 Comments
in Core Fitness, Fitness Misconceptions

Over the recent years, a popularized strategy for improving one’s fitness game has become what is known as sports specific training programs. Many good things have come out of the research and development of these programs, but many bad and downright ugly things have come out of them too – particularly when sports specific training is misunderstood and implemented incorrectly.

In this article, we’ll discuss the good, the bad and the ugly aspects of sports specific training so that you can get the best results out of your training. I’ll also explain to you how to avoid getting injuries common to incorrect implementation of these programs, explain how sports specific training relates to core fitness, and show you how research into sports specific training can help improve your level of fitness even if you’re not training for a specific sport.

Sports specific training programs usually involve an athlete performing weight training exercise movements that simulate the type of movements the athlete performs in their given sport. Programs are often periodized, meaning they comprise of different phases with each phase focusing on developing a particular fitness attribute, and each phase builds on the previous one.

The training phases for sports specific training programs usually look something like this:

Early Pre Season Phase:

The emphasis of this phase is usually to build foundational muscle strength, size and endurance. This phase of exercises usually looks quite similar for all sports, with the only major difference being whether the emphasis is predominantly on increasing strength or endurance.

Mid Pre Season Phase:

Commencing this phase, established foundational strength and endurance has paved the way for emphasis on building maximum strength in movements comparable to those performed during sports performance.

A sports specific training program of this phase for a basketball player or volleyball player might look something like this:

Barbell squat or sled hack squat

Barbell bench press

Romanian deadlift

Lat pulldown to front with wide grip

Pull ups

Late Pre Season Phase:

Having developed strength, the next phase can be implemented –power development. Power is the ability to move the heaviest loads in the shortest time. Power is essentially a product of strength and speed.

The sports specific training program of this phase for a basketball player or volleyball player might look something like this:

Weights

Barbell or dumbbell hang clean

Seated calf raises

Cable push pull

One arm cable raises each arm

Barbell or dumbbell push press

Medicine ball standing twist with partner (or alone)

Box jump march (repetitions fast, recover between sets)

Vertical Jump (both sides)

Plyometrics training

Plyometric training involves exercises that emphasize bounding, jumping, rebound jumping and hopping. These exercises emphasis development of power, useful for gaining maximum vertical height when jumping.

In Season Phase:

The emphasis of this phase is to maintain strength and power specific to the sport. This would usually involved alternating between phase 2 (Strength) and phase 3 (Power) for a total of two sessions per week. Every fifth week should involve no weight training at all to assist recovery.

Off Season Phase:

The emphasis of this phase is to rest and recover – recharge the batteries so to speak. This would usually involve a week of doing minimal physical training and forgetting about the game. It’s about allowing the mind and body to recover both physically and mentally. After a week of relaxing, staying active in the off season may involve doing some recreational activities and games.

The Good

Research and development into the periodization phases of training has provided athletes with the ability to systematically build up their fitness levels so that they can choose when to reach the peak of their fitness and sports performance. Few people realize that the exercise phase doesn’t resemble a steadily increasing graph – whereby the more you train, the fitter and fitter you become.

The body has hormonal growth and development cycles, and to keep increasing in fitness requires understanding your body’s cycle so that you can periodize your training accordingly. For people not training for a specific sport, deliberately choosing when to commence the various phases is irrelevant. However, implementing periodization is important for any person in order to get the best results from their training.

All people vary in their hormonal and developmental cycle. However, each phase of the fitness cycle should usually last between 4-6 weeks. It is important to note that that having an ‘Off Season’ period is just as important to the training cycle as is any of the other periods. For various reasons (i.e. fear of stopping, regressing, losing motivation) most people are fearful of taking time out of their training regimen. What most people don’t realize is that by not taking time out of their training, they’ll actually become demotivated soon after their physical peak due to the physical over-stress, demonization from reaching herein reaching a plateau, and eventual regression in fitness from the body not being allowed its off season phase (rest and recovery).

Of course you’ll never be as fit and strong during you’re off season phase as you are when you are at the peak of your training phase. But when you reach the peak in your next training phase, you’ll be better, fitter, faster, stronger than you were when you peaked previously. Training in rhythm with your body’s cycles ensures that you will ultimately become better, fitter, faster, stronger with each progressive cycle.

In general, all training cycles should look something like this:

Phase 1:

Foundational Fitness Building – Allowing the mind and body to accustom itself to stress placed upon it.

Phase 2:

Strength & Hypertrophy Building – Giving the body the opportunity to make the greatest hormonal growth and muscle development.

Phase 3:

Athletic Performance Building – Converting the founding muscle development into functional athletic performance ability.

Phase 4:

Maintaining Fitness & Increasing Muscle Memory – Repeatedly exercising and practicing all aspects of fitness – strength, speed, power, agility, balance, endurance, stamina, accuracy, coordination and flexibility.

Phase 5:

Rest and Recovery – Give your mind and body the rest it desires and deserves from all the work that it has done. Celebrate your achievements!

The Bad

These days, most athletes utilize weights training as part of their training regimen. If you have read my ebook ‘Better, Faster, Fitter, Stronger’ you would understand the clear distinction that I make between weights training and weightlifting. The former is about building a more muscular physique for aesthetic purposes – namely bodybuilding; while the latter is a form of training intended to increase primarily strength and power.

For more insight into the distinction between these two forms of training and for breakthrough information how to train more effectively download my ebook in the right hand side of this page ‘Turn Your Body Into a Machine – Become Better, Fitter, Faster, Stronger’

Unfortunately, most athletes and even a majority of strength and conditioning coaches don’t realize the distinction between these two distantly different forms of training, and develop and practice a program largely based on isolated weights training movements. In basic terms, virtually all of these exercise movements are designed to disengage the core muscles to give greatest muscle development to the extremity muscles.

Having superior core strength is essential for optimum performance while conducting any physical movement – whether it be driving the legs hard on a bicycle, stabilizing control to minimize movement when firing an arrow or drawing power from the ground through to the hips and into the fist to deliver a powerful punch.

There are a myriad of other reasons for why weights training is downright bad for increasing athletic sports performance, so to get an in depth understanding of just why, read my ebook ‘Better, Fitter, Faster, Stronger” and or the article bodybuilding vs. strength building.

The Ugly

As various sports recruit muscles selectively based on the needs of the movements involved, sports specific programs are often developed to include exercises that target the particular muscles used for the sports movements. Supporting this claim, it is evidently clear that as examples; a quarterback does not have physical requirements as a linebacker, or a marathon runner’s requirements to a sprinter. But the overlap in physical requirement may actually be greater than what is perceived.

Of course the muscle mass that a linebacker has is vastly greater than the mass of a marathon runner. But put mass aside, and realize that the driving force for the movements that they both conduct comes from their ability to generate and execute core strength. While there are surely specific needs to any sport, the need for specificity can be completely met by regular practice and training within the sport rather than in a strength and conditioning program.

In actual fact, beyond the fact that most strength and conditioning programs do not facilitate core strengthening, the selective isolated training movements designed to target specific muscle used in the sport facilitates muscle imbalances. This ultimately decreases athletic performance and makes the athlete more prone to injury. Maximum ability to generate any athletic movement with greatest efficiency comes from muscle symmetry.

At the end of the day, the needs of an Olympic athlete completing in volleyball to the needs of a hockey player, to the needs of a cyclist, to the needs of your grandpa differ by degree of fitness and not by type of fitness. Competence and dominance in any sport or general fitness enthusiast manifests itself through identical physiological mechanisms – core fitness and core strength training and practice of performing actual sports movements of which we desire to dominate. Once a base foundation of superior core strength has been build, transference between sports is just a matter of practice playing the game, and perhaps (and that is a big perhaps) your physical genetic build to some degree.

Happy core training and practicing your game.

Karl