Roger Nelsen Jr.
Spearheaded by the work of coach John Broz, ultra-specific Bulgarian-style training has once again come back en vogue. Based around the idea of only performing one’s sporting movements themselves, or direct derivatives, at near maximal intensity, the style has an inescapably simple appeal, and would seem to be backed by some astounding results.
Similar methods were reported to have been used by a handful of Greek sprinters some years ago, with the bulk of their work having come in the form of repeat 200M dashes at full intensity. The ultimate result was a 200M Olympic gold medal for Konstantinos Kenteris. Once more, impressive support for an almost too-simple training method. Given the claims, and the medals, and the simplicity, the question then arises: is performing a sporting movement maximally really all we need? Before answering that, there are a few other things that need to be looked at.
One of the incontrovertible seven laws governing training is the Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands (SAID) Principle. This law states that training will produce results based upon the nature of said training, and given a certain nature, certain types of training will always produce the same adaptations. In a nutshell, train explosively if you want to jump higher, lift heavy weights if you want to be stronger, and tax your heart and lungs if you want to run longer. Whatever skills or abilities you want to build up, do so by performing movements of a similar nature or demand and increase their volume and intensity over time. Given that this is indeed a law, and not merely a suggestion, of training, it would seem that methods like those of the Bulgarian weightlifters or Greek sprinters would be the rational endpoint: Simulate the competitive movement, at the competitive intensity, as voluminously as possible. This however, is somewhat misleading and doesn’t take all of the factors into consideration.
The primary catch in the SAID principle is that while higher volumes of specific work do lead to higher levels of specific adaptations, there comes a point where athletes plateau. For some, this may be at the absolute peak of their genetic potential (Like Kenteris and the Bulgarians), but for most it comes about due to overuse injuries, mental burnout, or a plain old cessation of progress. It’s my opinion (based on my observations over many years of training with many clients) that this occurs because the human body is meant to function in a state of balance, and specific training upsets that balance. To explain this better, let’s take a step back.
The Biological Machine Known as the Human Body
Ultimately, the human body is a biological machine designed to do two things: stay alive and reproduce. While the latter goal is beyond the scope of this article, the former tells us something incredibly important. The human body survives by being able to navigate through and respond to its environment. Doing this proficiently requires the ability to generate a wide variety of responses. For ultimate survival, a body would have sound and mobile joints, stiff connective tissues, strong and powerful muscles, good aerobic and anaerobic capacity, a high degree of general motor coordination, and overall strength/postural balance. Basically, what is optimal for survival is to be a jack-of-all-trades. Participating in high level athletics, on the other hand, requires specialization, and that throws things off kilter.
By performing high volumes of specific work for years on end, one shapes their physique into a tool finely honed for the performance of their sporting skills. In doing so however, they tend to upset the balance their body was created to display. Weaknesses of repeated, high volume specific work can include the following:
- Strength imbalances grow between antagonistic muscles
- Joints tighten with repetitive motion
- Energy systems are neglected
- Motor pathways are starved of new movements.
While the specific proficiency of elite athletes is as high as humanly possible, it is often accompanied by the neglect of structural and functional balance. This is where we see the aforementioned injuries, burnouts, and plateaus, and the way that too many coaches typically respond to them is by taking a short deload before going right back to their old program. Rather than just beating a dead horse, or even trying to rehab an injured one, I’d like to throw some things out that will help the whole situation before it can become one.
Flipping SAID on Its’ Head: The Principle of Inverse Specialization
First and foremost, I’d like to present a new theory that I have labeled the Principle of Inverse Specialization. Unlike the SAID principle, which states that specific types of training create specific adaptations, the principle of inverse specialization states: The higher the level of general ability one demonstrates, the more readily their body will be able to tolerate specific training and reap the adaptations it generates. On the contrary, the lower the level of general ability one demonstrates, the less receptive their body will be to specific training and the more likely they will be to suffer injury or burnout.
With the above in mind, it makes sense that I’m quite the opposite of the Greeks and Bulgarians. I am a huge fan of general work and think that, for a majority of athletes, it is the key to to a long, healthy, successful athletic career. That having been said, I think that general training is rarely applied properly within most conditioning programs, and to get the most bang for one’s buck, they need to reassess what they’re trying to get out of their general work.
Though I don’t suppose to speak for the field as a whole, a vast majority of general strength and conditioning programs focus their strength work around attempting to drive up numbers in a few key multi-joint lifts, usually using stable speeds and predictable intensity changes. While this has proven effective for many athletes, I don’t think it’s optimal. By limiting the number of different lifts one performs, and by organizing them in a very “static” way, one isn’t really focusing on increasing their truly general abilities, they’re merely specializing in yet another small group of specific movement patterns. The key then, is to make sure that your general work is organized to build all of your abilities from all angles, to make it random, but in a balanced, coordinated fashion.
Tackling the Task of Effective General Training
In order to tackle the seemingly paradoxical task given above, it helps to have a template of sorts. I organize all of my training by classifying strength training movements into five categories: squat, hip hinge, upper body push, upper body pull, and abdominal stabilization. Each and every training session, my trainees will perform one movement from each category, and will switch up lifts from session to session. This switching is the first key to maximizing general ability. While performing one lift from each category will largely take care of structural balance issues, the fact that the lifts from each category are constantly cycling through takes care of the randomness.
By properly selecting and rotating through lifts, one can ensure they are receiving a wide variety of movement patterns. Unilateral, bilateral, differing foot placements, differing hand placements, different loading implements, the variations are virtually endless. While this sort of application will probably never result in the world’s highest power cleans, squats, or bench presses, it will prepare the body for nearly any eventuality by targeting every muscle group from wildly differing angles and by building up general coordination to a significant degree.
Beyond movement selection, it is also suggested to work with varying loading parameters and repetition ranges. I’ve found that waving volumes and intensities on a daily basis, governing loads by feel, has the best outcomes. Much like a daily undulating periodization scheme, I like to alternate between high rep bodybuilding work, high intensity strength work, ballistics and power work, overcoming and yielding isometrics, or whatever else one feels like doing on a given training day. Really, as long as the overall drain isn’t too excessive, each loading pattern has its benefits and all will contribute to overall readiness. The only real key is to make sure you touch on every one of the applications and try not to play favorites.
Outside of the weight room, a similar approach can be applied to sporting warm up drills. For athletes participating in track and field, or any other monotonous or repetitive sport, the nature of their events can cause imbalances in the tissues and/or stagnation due to a lack of fresh motor pattern exposure or boredom. An easy cure is to switch up their warm ups on a regular basis. Perform drills in different orders, do things backwards, do them in different directions, incorporate new drills, do whatever it takes. Again, the key is variety. For athletes in random, generative team sports, this isn’t an issue. The sport takes care of their spontaneity needs.
Beyond the general stuff, my take on specific work is simple: Perform the sporting movement itself at varying intensities, and perform similar movements to bring up specific weaknesses. Not rocket science. The only trick is in organizing things so as to get in enough specific volume to keep sporting progress on the rise, while simultaneously getting enough general volume to stay healthy and maintain your base of fitness. That’s a topic for a different article, however.
Concluding Thoughts
To wrap things up, general training should be truly general in nature. Building up a few lifts within a limited repetition range isn’t preparation for sport, it’s just a secondary area of specialization in itself. To really keep an athlete healthy and prepared to train, vary your movement selection, vary your repetition ranges, vary your intensities, vary your lifting style, and do all of the above constantly. By doing so you will ensure a high level of health and general ability, and create the most stable platform from which specific sporting abilities can be developed.
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