General vs. Specific Training and Reaching Elite Performance

Within any physical culture, there come the upper echelons of specialization. Take the NBA dunk contest for example (non-specialized performance), and compare that to internet dunkers like Team Flight Brothers (specialized performance). Compared to TFB, NBA dunkers are amateurs, but for a good reason. They don’t specialize! Believe me, if the cream of the crop NBA dunkers practiced only dunking, and relegated playing basketball to 10-20% of their training time, they would be dropping our jaws with internet highlight trick dunk reels in addition to their monster in-game dunks.

Specialization Training

When we move to specialize in anything, training must change. Strength, plyometrics, and everything in between must change. When we move to become a master of anything, we need to switch our training strategy.

Specialization training is radical and is different compared to a typical strength and power regiment for team sport. When athletes specialize in something such as sprinting, jumping, lifting, running, kayaking, or skipping rope, the general and special strength volumes in their training program are always in a state of perpetual trade-off… if extra strength work is even there at all! Most top level specialists (Jamaican sprinters or street dunk specialists) don’t even lift (especially according to Dom Mazzetti), or the lifting they actually do would be considered a joke by most strength coaches, and is hardly “sport specific”. Most successful Olympic and Powerlifters utilize an extremely small rotation of lifts as they approach high performance.

5 Keys to Specialized Performance

I recently read an article “On My Mind Grape” highlighting the fact that the late Charlie Francis had said that “there have been no 100m sprinters who have run under 9.8 seconds following a specific strength training program. These athletes all have supposedly followed general, or non-specific lifting programs. After reading this, I began to weigh Francis’ philosophy with my own approaches for individual sport athletes in track, swim, and of course, vertical jump specialists. After briefly contemplating the matter, I have the following 5 keys to specialized performance:

1. Fewer Exercises

The more specialized you want to get in performance, the fewer exercises you’ll want to use in your program. Extremely specialized sports, such as powerlifting and distance running will typically see 90% of the training (or more) revolve around the competitive exercise itself. More complex motor movements such as jumping and throwing might see only 50% of the training revolve around the competitive exercise, with the other 50% devoted to other supporting training means, including special strength exercises (med ball throws, plyometrics) and general strength exercises such as weightlifting.

2. Competitive Exercise

As an athlete progresses from beginner to elite, they will need to put more of their focus on their competitive exercise. This is for a variety of reasons, ranging from injury prevention, to burnout, but from a nervous system point of view, beginners will often need extra exercises to strengthen weak points and more importantly, enhance/strengthen the motor pool that supports their competition work. Once these beginners move through sport mastery and eventually get to a certain level of high performance, the amount of exercises that are not the competition exercise must be greatly reduced. Often the mistake is tying a mental anchor around those special exercises that helped them move from a beginner to intermediate stage of athletic development, and assuming those exercises will also take them to elite levels. Too much special supporting work will pull the CNS of the athlete in too many different directions to be able to make that motor program in the brain that will yield the ultimate PR and the subsequent hardwiring of the athletes physiology that comes with it.

3. General Work

General work (training that is biomechanically different then a competitive exercise) is useful in all seasons of an athlete’s career. For all intents and purposes, general work is basic weightlifting, squats, leg press, deadlift, bench press, and the myriad of auxiliary circuit training means out there. Light team sport play is also considered general work, and is critical for the long term development of dynamic athletes in some capacity, particularly jumping athletes. This work can remain in the training load of a highly elite athlete to a small extent because it doesn’t interfere with the primary motor pathway of the athlete, and it also allows them to recover from their intense primary exercise efforts both physiologically and psychologically. Some of the more intense general strength training means such as squats and deadlifts much be greatly reduced in volume when an athlete moves into specialized performance, however.

4. Potentiation

Although specialization is important when it comes to workload distribution, let’s not forget the ability of heavy special strength work to potentiate big performances. This rings more true in things like jumping, sprinting and throwing then powerlifting or Olympic lifting, as strength sports are, of themselves, a stimulus that provides a contrast effect to lightened activities. Exercises with significant training effects such as heavy ½ squats or depth jumps can provide a big charge to the nervous system due to the wider breadth of their force production, and can be instrumental in inducing PR efforts in similar activities, especially on the intermediate/advanced level of athletic development where a reasonable level of strength has been acquired. For example, even though an exercise like a clean may share a similar motor pathway with sprinting and compete for adaptation reserves, during areas of peak performance, the clean can be applied in small and intense doses to assist in priming that motor pathway for high performance. It can also be used, not only for competitive purposes, but also for priming important practice sessions. In either of these situations, I prefer not to use a heavy lift as a short term (less than 30 min before) primer, but more as a long term (6-24 hours) potentiation device. This priming makes up the bulk of many of my SPP and competitive phases for power based specialization sports.

5. Seasonal Considerations

Along with an athlete becoming more specialized through the course of their training year, so too must this work throughout the course of an athlete’s season. Each season will often start with a greater percentage of special exercises, and proportionally less focus on the competition exercise. As the athlete moves towards higher performance areas of the season, they will need to narrow their focus of special exercises to those which carry the greatest training effect and transfer to their specifically to their event area. Once an athlete reaches the top peak of their season, there are two ways in which to go with special exercises. The first is the safe way: keep the competitive exercise, get rid of all special exercises, and keep in enough general work (basic lifting and circuit work) to maintain baseline movement patterns and fitness. This lies along the Charlie Francis model of things. The second is the risky model, one that can work well, but can also backfire. This model keeps special strength work in as an athlete approaches peak as a potentiation device, which I talked about in point 4. Either can work, but perhaps it is up to future case studies, as well as the individual athlete, to determine exactly which is better.

Genetically Gifted Athletes

So there we have 5 insights on how things change when we start intensely specializing in training efforts. This also helps things make more sense when we take a look at an athlete who can accomplish the incredible, but barely touches a weight in the process. These athletes are typically genetically gifted in terms of natural strength, and not worrying about which special exercises or lifting to do simplifies things down to mental intensity and drive, as well as managing the fatigue of their competition exercise.

Real Life Training Examples

To finish this short article off, I’ll give a quick example of two sprinters I have been working with in the weightroom (I have a strength and conditioning day job), and their corresponding sprint times this indoor track season. Sprinter A is an extremely powerful athlete, and very fast twitch. His standing vertical went from 33” to 38” in about 6 weeks in fall training, but leveled out after that and gradually regressed into December. For him, the issue was the high demand of his sprint specific pathways due to intense track work, so in December, we reduced the specific volume and intensity via the Olympic lifts (specific strength), and stuck in an extremely efficient general remedy: high rep half squats, HIT style. I would have him do a warmup set of 10 half squats with around 130kg, and then do a single burner set of 15-20 reps with 140kg (as general as you can get with this pathway). Cooldown, end of session, bye bye, see you in two days. Sometimes we might replace the single set with a couple sets of 12 or so. We got back to a bit more specific training the first few weeks of indoor, and the result has been a school record in the indoor 60m, as well as a tenth of a second improvement off of last year at this time.

Sprinter B is a 100m guy who has struggled with lower leg injuries, but has made great and steady improvement in the weightroom through the fall. His training has catered much more towards the specific end of things since he hasn’t been able to run much. He improved his vertical jump this fall from 32” to 37” by December, and never regressed because the strain on his sprint pathways was minimal, due to his injury. He was lifting heavier weights in nearly all sprint specific lifts I have the sprinters do then his peers. His first meet of the year, he ran a big PR in the 60m dash, and 1/100^th off of the old school record. His 200m, however, was not very sharp, as his training until that point was lopsided on the side of sprint specific force and strength due to prior injury. What it will take for him to improve his 200m (and even his 60m) is not the weights at this point, but injury free work on the track. Once is able to do the work on the track to hit his sprint specific pathways significantly hard, he will need to scale back on his specific work in the weightroom.

Hopefully through these two examples, you’ll have a better picture of the roles specific and general strength play when it comes to building specialized athletes, and an idea of how to optimize the two throughout the season. Any questions or comments, leave them below and I’ll get back to you!