Sport Specificity of Weight Room and Rehab a.k.a Functional Training

The terms "functional" exercise and "specificity" get thrown around a lot in the rehabilitation and sports performance realm. Many people live and die by these terms and feel if your exercise programing does not mimic some sort of demand that is present in life, then the exercise is worthless to perform. 

I am certainly in agreement that the goal of whatever interventions we give in either the rehabilitation or sports performance setting, we want to see a transfer or carryover to that particular task/sport that is noticeable or measurable. 

However, I think many people fail to realize there are different levels of carryover and that "specificity" and "function" both lie on a continuum based upon the certain qualities we are aiming to train.

So in the world or rehablitation or strength and conditioning, what can we have an impact on with our clients?

1) Resistance to fatigue - This can be general endurance and work capacity levels, then programed more specifically for the energy system which is used in sport.

2) Strength - Foundational levels of the ability to produce force. Which once the foundational levels of strength are met, then we can start to manipulate the variables that pertain most to a particular sport. Those variables of force are: rate of force developed, direction of force, duration and frequency of force (both relatable to energy systems), and magnitude of force.

3) Movement Variability - Do we have the movement options necessary for the task as well as adaptability to the uncertainty of the environment?

I wrote an entire article on this which you can read HERE.

These are the qualities that we are looking to develop in human beings and athletes. Foundational levels of compentency in each of these should be a goal, but we can certainly train these qualities specific to the demand of whatever sport or life task the client is trying to accomplish as well. 

When programing, their comes a point when you can only attack so many qualities at once. Furthermore, the sacrafice made for specificity could come at the expense of improving tissue qualities and capabilities.

For example: The weight room does not prepare people to sprint. The individual MUST sprint to actually improve upon that specific task. Too often we forget this and program strictly strength or weight room exercises and neglect what is truely specific (which is sprinting). No weight room exercise you create is going to be as specific as that. With something as dynamic and skillful as sprinting, there is no need to create an exercise. Your time would be better spent sprinting (acceleration or top end speed, whichever desired to be improved upon). Then in the weightroom choosing exercises that enhance the individuals ability to improve tissue qualities necessary to improve the actual skill of sprinting (qualities needed for better acceleration or top end speed).

This might look something like the following for sprinting:

1) Squat - Develop capacity to create a large magnitude of force 

2) 3 Step Single leg horizontal bounding from a 3 point start position- Putting all three together by being able to display high magnitude of force, quickly, and in a similar direction. Goal is to cover as much ground as possible in 3 steps.

3) Heavy Sled Pushes - Direction of force is similar and still working to improve the ability to create a bigger magnitude of force.

Note: sets, reps, and rest all programed around the energy system necessary for sport which will now take into the account duration and frequency of force

4) These qualities then are carried over into the act of sprinting (acceleration focus in this case) which can be programed for specific energy demands of sport so athlete can resist fatigue. The act of sprinting still works all qualities of force.

Another example is agility in the game of basketball. You could practice low box drills, lateral shuffle, assisted and resisted shuffle drills, deceleration and reacceleration drills. These are all well and good. Certainly they have the best chance of carry over to lateral movement in the sport of basketball. However when the athlete is on the court, what you taught them may go out the window. The task, context, and the environment all changed. True specificity would come from working with the sport coaches to communicate with them this is what we have been working on. Here's the shin angles I want to see, etc. Then develop a specific game or drill with a ball, defender, etc to focus on this quality. In the weight room you cannot come close to that type of specificity. As such your goals should be to improve tissue qualities and movement qualities necessary for the desired action. Then take them to their sport environment and devise game simulations that focus on the same action.