Sports Specific Training: It has a time and a place.

 One thing I’m asked probably more often than anything else when discussing programming for a particular athlete or client is “So do you like, do sports specific stuff?” The way I answer that question usually surprises the person who poses it. I’m not about to tell you that I don’t think about the sport an individual is training for when I design programs. I think it’s absolutely ridiculous to assume that sports specificity is becoming completely obsolete in performance training, but I do believe that professionals around the world are starting to view it in a different light. I’d like to talk a little bit about how I view sports specificity, how I train to a particular genre of sport and why I think it’s important to touch on but not dwell on.

Before covering “sport specific” cover “individual specific.”

 I perform a battery of assessments with every athlete I work with. Trust me, I don’t do this for my health. As a matter of fact, it’s probably the furthest thing from that, because I hate assessment weeks. They’re boring, they don’t make you sweaty, or teach you any life lessons and you don’t get to get covered in chalk. They’re a necessary evil, however, and without them I’m convinced my programs wouldn’t be half as effective as they are. I use these assessments to determine what kind of canvas I’m working with before I paint. Poor core positioning, muscular imbalances and lack of range of motion in specific areas of need will hold you back (and possibly leave you with acute or chronic injuries) long before skipping out on that crazy cool exercise you saw your favorite NBA player performing in a commercial. So next time you want to ask your coach “How is THIS going to make me better at _____________?” Understand that there may be more to a training program than what you think.

Sport specific programming requires omission just as much as addition.

This idea was first introduced to me a few years back by my former roommate, Scott Peters. I thought he was crazy. Had I known then that he would one day accept internships with the Anaheim Angles, Boston Red Sox and get accepted to the Physical Therapy program at Duke University, I would have listened better. That boy smart. When I think about sport specificity, I first think about what I shouldn’t be doing with the particular athlete. For example, most overhead athletes (volleyball players, baseball players and swimmers) spend so much time in an overhead state that I’m going to avoid training them with weight bearing overhead movements. The idea is to allow for continued health in the overhead position without over loading the pattern and furthering pathology created through over use. Rotational athletes are another good example. You’d have a hard time arguing that making an athlete more explosive in the sagittal plane isn’t beneficial to most every sport, but if supplementing fundamental strength with rotational power will serve the athlete better. Omitting those power cleans and squat thrusts for some medicine ball work or offloaded single-leg work might be necessary.

Too much sport specialization can progress sports specific pathology.

Eric Cressey, a private strength coach in Massachusetts and one of my biggest role models, originally brought this idea to me. Understanding that spending a lot of time in the same position and moving in the same direction over and over eventually will contribute to imbalances and the chronic overuse injuries I touched on earlier. Sometimes getting an athlete back to the fundamentals of strength and conditioning, and away from some of the sports specific movements that are so desirable can be just what the doctor ordered. Continuing to beat up the same rotations, change of directions, and planes of movement the athlete experiences in a competitive season throughout his/her offseason may leave you with a bigger problem down the road than you would have had otherwise.

Hopefully this gives you a little insight as to where the realm of sports specific training might be headed and when and where a good time to implement it would be. It’s important to pick and choose your spots when preparing an athlete for their competitive season. Finding a balance between the over use of certain movements and missing out on important adaptations is something every coach needs to understand. Training smart isn’t always as easy as it seems.

Thanks for reading.

Caleb Heilman

“The only thing I know is I’ll never know everything.” – Jason Green