In the preface to Beyond Functional Training, I discussed the principle that the single most important characteristic of a successful relationship between exercise selection in strength and condition and conditioning and sport performance for an athlete or a team is that ANY exercise the athlete ever does in the short or the long term improves the athlete’s ability to practice or compete.

This principle implies that exercise selection is a reverse engineered process. We can only find out which exercises are relevant to the athlete or client by looking at their end goal and then “working backwards” to where they are now.

The approach of working backwards does NOT mean that the athlete or client will develop muscle imbalances or does not build a “base.”

A former – and very successful colleague of mine – focused on building a base in the athletes she worked with and progressed from there. She used a forward engineered process. She also could not explain why her training was working for the athletes she worked with. Her athletes loved her, but the few times an athlete choose to stop working with her, it was because they did not feel (understand) how the training was supposed to help them in their sport.

I have always had trouble with the concept of “general”, “specific” and “special” exercises.

Famously, “general physical preparedness” (GPP) includes “balanced physical conditioning’ in endurance, strength, speed and other basic factors of fitness, whereas “special physical preparation” (SPP) concentrates on exercises that are more specific to the particular sport. Further, “GPP and SPP always form an interconnected unit and in some cases they might be largely indistinguishable”. ⁽²²⁾

According to the dictionary general means can have several related meanings, for example, ‘not specialized”, “not specialized”, “including miscellaneous items”, “applicable or true in most cases.” All these meanings of the word general can relate to the concept of “general strength training” and “general physical preparedness.”

The meanings of the word general may convey the idea that exercises and training methods in “general strength training” can be chosen without particular discernment in relation to the athlete’s goal. Just make sure to “cover most major muscle groups or movement patterns” and the program is fine.

Anatoly Bondarchuk, one of the most successful coaches ever, gives a good definition of general exercises: “General exercises refer to those exercises that are typically used for conditioning, but do not have a direct correlation to improvement of the sports skill or sport performance.”

Understand the above definition by considering a brick house. The bottom row of bricks (the general exercises) does not directly support the roof (performance). However, without the bottom row of bricks the roof would be unstable or crumble. Only by FIRST considering the nature of the roof (size, shape and weight) would it be possible to determine which bricks to use and where to place them. Thus we can say that the bottom row of bricks is SPECIFIC to the roof. And by the same token the “General exercises” must be SPECIFIC to the desired performance.

Instead of focusing on the concept of ‘general training,” which might be misleading, it is more effective to focus on the specific sequence of exercises that, applied over weeks, months and years can build a beginner into a world class athlete. This is the idea of the conjugate exercise system. There is no need for the “general” and “specific” distinction. Focusing on the entire sequence provides a much better understanding of the training process.

What are YOUR thoughts on general vs specific exercises?

To Your Success,
Karsten

PS: If you would like to learn many SPECIFIC examples of the conjugate exercise system, you will like “Beyond Functional Training”. Click to find out how to attend.

The idea of having no emotional biases for any exercises was first presented to me by Paul Chek a long time ago. In case you are not sure what I mean, here is an example of “emotional biases” in action.

Until 2007 I lived in Denmark and between 1999-2007. I was the Head Strength Coach for Team Denmark, the Danish Equivalent of Sport Canada. I was very fortunate to have a job description that allowed me to focus on an exclusive group of athletes. One group of athletes I did not work with was the National Sailing Team, but I watched their strength and conditioning programs.

Initially, their program was created by a strength coach who used to be the Olympic Weightlifting Coach for the national team. During that time the first exercise in their strength training program was power cleans, because “power cleans are good for grip strength and sailors need grip strength.” (Those where the strength coach’s exact words when I asked him why he started the training program with Power Cleans.)

A couple of years later, a younger strength coach, who was a mountain climber, took over. Now, the first exercise in the sailors’ strength training program was pull ups, because “pull ups are good for grip strength and sailors need grip strength.” (You guessed it, I asked him.)

Their biases in exercise selection were obvious. The question that should have been asked was, “What is the best way to develop grip strength if you are a sailor?” and approach the answer from a clean slate.

There is one more angle to this point. In 2006, I attended The Russian Kettlebell Certification, which was a great learning experience with ONE (natural and understandable) caveat that characterizes certifications that are based on one piece of equipment. Naturally, in order to make his certification as valuable as possible, Pavel tried to show how to train for any goal using a kettlebell. And in the first few days after the course, I found myself thinking, “How can I train this with a kettlebell?”

I had gotten a “mind virus” that had the name of “Kettlebell” (It could have had any other name, dumbbell, barbell, etc.). Can you understand how I was limiting myself with the structure of the question? By asking, “How can I train this with a kettlebell?” I was immediately excluding the possibility that the best way to train a certain client for a certain goal would involve ANOTHER piece of equipment (or no equipment at all).

The right question to ask is, “What is the best way, equipment or no equipment, to train this client for this particular goal (ex. Legs) at this point in time?”

You know the saying, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” The implication is that in order to effectively train our clients we need a variety of tools in our tool box. Here is a short list of the most important ones (in random order).

Barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, clubbells, cables, tires/kegs/logs, swiss ball, balance boards, suspension straps, body weight/animal movements, boxes/hurdles/medicine balls, tubing/bands/chains, sleds, grip etc.

It is clear that the more tools you have in your tool box (= the more different types of equipment you can correctly, effectively and safely include in your clients’ programs) the greater the likelihood that you can choose the best possible type of equipment for your client at any point in time.

The ability to optimally answer the question, “What is the best way, equipment or no equipment, to train this client for this particular goal (ex. Legs) at this point in time?” has one tremendously important implication. You CANNOT follow “trends.” As soon as we start paying too much attention to “trends” we get biased and tend to see only what is currently trendy.

It is, and always will be, your goal, to strive for an unbiased knowledge of the pros and cons of different types of equipment, and subsequently use the right piece of equipment at the right time.

What about you?

Do you have any emotional biases towards certain exercises?

To Your Success,
Karsten

PS: When you understand how important it is to choose the exercises with the highest degree of transfer as well as HOW to choose exercises, your emotional bias for certain exercises can be released (if you want to!). If you want to be FREE to choose the RIGHT exercises then you want to attend “Beyond Functional Training’. Click here to learn more.

What is a principle? A “principle” is a basic truth, law or assumption (thefreedictionary.com). A “principle” can also mean a “predetermined or fixed policy or mode of action.”

“Predetermined or fixed policies or modes of action do not sound like concepts that enhance the quality and results of training programs. Predetermined or fixed policies may give association to political or public systems, where policies may be in action to adhere to dogma, save money or save time.

However, the principles and policies that you will see here are based on physiology, scientific research, basic physiology or pure experience from training facilities all over the world. The principles have one purpose and one purpose only, to help you, the strength coach or personal trainer, select the RIGHT exercises at the RIGHT time and thus in the short or in the long run help the athlete or client towards the stated goal.

Well-developed principles help us create better training programs FASTER, because we don’t have to start from scratch every single time. On the other hand, no principle is better and more “secure” than the results produced by using the principle. Therefore, any principle can and should be questioned over time. If the questioning process leads to more effective principles, the old principle is discarded in favour of the new and improved principle.

While some of the principles laid out in this chapter have the characteristic of “predetermined or fixed policy or mode of action”, other principles that you will see laid out in this chapter have the characteristic of a basic truth, such as, for example, the principle of Specificity.

In Chapter 1, I wrote about one example of specificity of grip strength, when the wrestler, Mark, improved his ability to lift his opponents by using a sandbag and a wrestling specific grip rather than a barbell.

Here is another great example of the principle of specificity pertaining to the jumping ability of one of the greatest athletes ever.

My first trip ever to the US was to attend the 1996 NSCA Conference in Atlanta. My first session was a pre-conference session with Vern Gambetta and James Farentinos. Vern Gambetta told a story about jump testing Michael Jordan during Jordan’s baseball time. During the tests, with no run up, Michael Jordan was in the lower half of the team, but when a run up was allowed (like in basketball) they couldn’t measure him, his jump was too high (I believe they used a Vertec).

What about you? Do you have any experiences with specificity of training?

Do you have any experiences that seem to contradict the principle of specificity?

To Your Success,
Karsten

PS: The Principle of Specificity is supported by a large number of specific rules. If you think that these rules would make exercise selection easier for you, then you will like Beyond Functional Training - Maximizing the Transfer of Training Effects through science based exercise selection Click here to find out more.