“ Whether you’re a D1 athlete or a slum off the streets, you have to have a purpose to your training”
[2] Lifting with Intent: Specificity
The Texas Monthly posted back in 2017 that around 15% of high school students participated in UIL sanctioned high school football. With that being said, I would love estimate that more than half of this population would continue to be active for a majority of their early adulthood, including me. The framework of most football players looks similar: run a lot and lift a lot, for a very long time. To be more specific, it would be running 40 yards, running stadiums with various technique, and lifting full body 2-3 times a week. But once those Friday Night Lights shut off for the last time, you walk the stage…greet your principal with a cheerful smile upon receiving your diploma…move on with your life and have to figure out “what the hell do I do from here?”
I knew my steps would be college, getting a degree, finding a job and gal to surge our families into a fleet that would conquer the southwestern region of America (wishful thinking). But one part of my life that continued to change, even to this day, was lifting weights. I went to college and immediately thought….
“Where do I run stadiums”?
“Where do I run sprints”?
“Why won’t this rec center let me lift with any smidgen of chalk”?
Here’s the thing, whether you’re a D1 athlete or a slum off the streets, you have to have a purpose to your training (ie: Lifting with Intent-reference my previous blog). My intent wasn’t to be a high school football player, so why was I eager to run stadiums or run sprints if this didn’t meet my needs anymore. I know there are thousands of lost souls in the realm of health and fitness who just copy workouts they experienced as a youth or that they saw from “Tony not so Little” banging bursts of sprints on his Gazelle (c) contraption from hell. Here is the thing…
Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing and however you’re doing it, you have to take the first step and identify your purpose.
My purpose is to improve my deadlift form while reaching a personal best on deadlift. So once I have defined my purpose, now it’s time for me to employ the next step: specificity. Specificity is just how it sounds…doing specific things for specific goals in a specific way. So if my goal is to perform better on bench and deadlift, I am going to bench and deadlift as much as I can through different modifications and variations of the bench and deadlift. Although this sounds simple, its amazing how absent minded some of us are when it comes to reaching our health and fitness goals. Its even MORE impressive the amount of ambassadors in the realm of not just health and fitness, but in sports performance that destroy athletes potential because they can’t even invoke this law…or rather this RULE of specificity. Below I am going to show two different sports, with two different physiological requirements and how they should approach their sports programming:
When looking at the information above, there are some similarities but also some major differences. On volleyball, there is the utilization of front squats, push press, lateral band walks and standing OH press. When you think about volleyball and their goal, its to be able to play vertical, play explosive and be able to have multi-directional capabilities. There was no indication of lateral walks for track, as there was a major emphasis on lower body movements and explosive tendencies with track. Their movements consisted of squats, split squats, hip bridges and hip flexor exercises. Track’s main tool is their lower body, and if that is not existent they have no shot in hell of performing at their best.
It all comes down to lifting with intent…having specificity employed with your programming and promoting a routine that meets the demands of your goal. My love and passion for sports performance doesn’t have to end in a discussion involving track and volleyball athletes, this law of specificity can apply to all other things health and fitness as well. Why would a client who yearns to lose weight go lift cluster sets of triples on power clean? Is this client looking to increase their hip strength to leap over any foe that stands in their way? We need to be informed and versatile with our programming, and not aimlessly curling dumbbells and pressing barbells with no intentionality…