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Certification for Active Minds

By Brian D. Johnston
President, I.A.R.T.

Including specific resistance training exercises to enhance sport specific movements is utter absurdity.  There are no degrees of specificity... either something is entirely specific or it is not – either a physical movement is completely specific or it is not.  Specific means explicit, particular, or definite, not ‘sort of’ or ‘similar.’ 

For example, throwing a baseball that is ounces heavier than the ball you are used to is no longer specific and will definitely hinder the accuracy of your pitch if continued then eventually returning to the original ball weight.   This phenomenon occurs since the nervous system controls the muscles, producing a particular pattern and firing rate participation of the motorneurons and skill acquisition in accordance to the practiced movement in question.

The inter-task transfer, or the ability for the skills of one activity to improve that of another unrelated activity, typically finds that the transfer is small or negligible.  If the tasks are more similar, the transfer tends to be higher yet still typically small.  An example would be a badminton player taking up tennis.  Because of this athlete’s past experience, the skills of badminton may help in learning the game of tennis.  However, a proficient tennis player will unlikely become a better tennis player as a result of learning badminton skills.  Never has a world-class tennis player become a world-class badminton or table tennis player.  The skills may appear similar, but differ greatly as a result of play area, racket weight, air resistance, ball/birdie weight, and kinetic characteristics such as speed, delivery, and return.

Strength training is analogous in this regard, but to a much greater magnitude.  The skills of a power clean cannot transfer to the skills of sprinting and dodging in football, or a slap-shot in hockey, although many strength and conditioning coaches believe otherwise.  Strength is general and contributes to any activity.  The applied demonstration of strength is specific, however, and applying strength to any activity, such as football, requires skill training.  And the only way to produce specificity in a sport is to practice the sport skills themselves – not something that appears to be similar.

Being more explicit, in football there are many positions, including running back, quarterback, and wide receiver.  Being good at one position does not make that athlete good at all positions.  If this were the case, a running back could take the quarterback’s place if the quarterback became injured during the game.  It should be obvious that the skill acquisition is much different from one position to another.  Likewise, Olympic lifting is even more far removed, not offering any direct transference of skill nor producing any better gains in strength or power than a sound program of strict, hard exercise characterized by safe, low-force, non-ballistic movement.

Since resistance exercises (regardless of their apparent duplications) are not specific to the speed, gait and force produced in athletic events, they are useless for increasing a specific skill and an inappropriate way to contribute to a skill.  Even the use of parachutes during sprinting has not been proven to optimally improve running speed since it is non-specific to the speed, mechanics, and gait of sprinting without a parachute.  Those who make modest gains from such training do so because the stress overload on the muscles caused muscular strength and growth to occur.  They could have received better results from a sensible strength training program and without disrupting the specifics of their natural gait.


NEGATIVE TRANSFER

Attempting to duplicate a sport specific movement with unaccustomed movements and loads results in the athlete learning two methods or styles of performance, thus causing a negative transfer.  Multiple motor memories adapt, which inevitably leads to confusion.  Competitive performance will either suffer or not benefit in any manner as a result. 

Similarly, it is not uncommon for a strength athlete to be very strong in the bench press, yet be relatively weak with the incline or decline bench press (if s/he did not also practice those movements) due to different motor learning patterns.  Try it yourself, utilizing a totally new exercise, and you will discover a comparable weakness to that of a seemingly similar exercise movement.

Arthur Jones, inventor of Nautilus equipment, relayed an excellent example of a small stone or grain of sand in a sock.  Did you notice how your gait changes in order to accommodate the discomfort?  That small grain of sand, although it felt huge, was enough of a change to alter the specificity of your gait.  Can you imagine what attempting to duplicate a sport specific movement with added resistance could do to your learning curve? 

To relay another example, operating a transport truck will not affect your ability to operate a small compact car since the two particulars and characteristics of these vehicles are so far removed.  But drive a small compact for several years, then suddenly a Lincoln Continental, and you will find the task more arduous, especially when parallel parking or moving in tight spaces.  The close relationship between the two cars makes observation and perception more difficult than that between a small car and the transport truck.  Furthermore, and as Arthur Jones personally observed, piloting a plane and driving a car is even more non-specific, having no detrimental effect on the two skills.

The ideal strength training routine for an athlete is to simply select common exercises, such as the bench press, squat, calf raise, bent row, chin-up, etc., and leave the skill training to the sport in question.  Despite the importance of including exercises that are geared toward the primary muscles of your sporting event (e.g., squats for sprinters, deltoid work for tennis players), exercise movements designed to be specific to a muscular movement found in a sport is a grave error.

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Brian D. Johnston is the President of the International Association of Resistance Trainers (I.A.R.T.), providing certification and education resources for personal trainers, coaches, and athletes.  His website is www.ExerciseCertification.com, where you will find dozens of free articles on exercise and nutrition science, including several on proper coaching practices for athletes.  Don’t forget to visit the learning resources section and pick up a book or video.  We have plenty of excerpts from each volume so you can ‘test the waters’ before buying.

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