Part 3 of 5 - Fitness Fundamentals Series
By: Jason Bungo, CSCS
Specificity and Individualization play a particularly important role in our fitness. The main concept to specificity is that the body will adapt to what demands we are placing on it. The body possesses a special ability to adapt to stress of all types, our type in fitness primarily being physical stress. Individualization also plays an important role in our decision making process. Everyone is different and what works for a given individual, even if it is considered best practice, may not work for another individual.
Lets take a look at a few given situations and dive into how they relate to our fitness fundamentals of both specificity and individualization:
Sedentary Individual, Looking to Lose Weight and Get in Shape:
When it comes to developing a training plan for these individuals, and most populations that do not have athletic based goals. We want a general approach to improve all areas of physical performance. We want to improve their strength, endurance, flexibility/mobility, balance and potentially even explosiveness. We will use a combination of strength training to help build muscle and boost our metabolism, cardio/endurance training to improve cardiovascular health, stretching and mobility exercises to improve range of motion and reach baseline flexibility standards, and even explosive training. Remember, explosive training is not just to improve our ability to jump, but slips can be like jumps in the way we land.
Triathlete Looking to Complete A Longer Distance for 1st Time or Improve Performance:
Looking at athletes brings some special challenges. Often times we are working with recreational athletes who have a limited amount of time, but yet have big goals they are attempting to achieve. When trying to decide an approach individually we must look at what qualities of fitness we are trying to improve. For many endurance athletes we are looking to improve our endurance. Therefore our primary focus will be on structuring our endurance workouts in the most effective manner. However, it would be naïve to think that their strength and explosiveness doe not have any effect on their performance. Building strength does not only make our muscles stronger, but also our bones, tendons and ligaments. Having stronger bones, tendons and ligaments will help increase our durability and prevent injuries. Additionally, explosive exercises have been shown to help with running efficiency and also with injury prevention.
Football Player, Linebacker, Looking to Improve Performance:
Some sports involve trying to add weight to the body, especially in sports like football when moving from high school level to college level. But we do not want to just add fat to the body to get there or this will not help our performance. Football is a sport where we need exceptional strength, explosiveness and speed. These will be our primary strength qualities to train. We will use strength training, explosive or plyometric training and even speed work like sprints and track workouts to accomplish our goals. However, there are "4" quarters in a football game and we do need some strength/speed endurance to continue performing at a high level throughout the entire game. And to that extent, we can structure all of workouts to improve these qualities.
These examples highlight primarily how specificity will be used to train someone. But individualization is just as important. If we do not create a plan that will work in an individuals' daily life, we are planning to fail. It is just as important to look at someone's schedule and other commitments in life when coming up with a plan. This means as a trainer, we need to approach individualization to the extent of viewing their entire life.
Let us take a look at one last variable of specificity and individualization in programming. Another common, but not properly coached athlete. The busy Mom or Dad. We want to approach individualization to whatever point is necessary. If it takes purchasing a set of adjustable dumbbells and programming in our fundamental movements in small sets throughout the day, with out of the norm physical activity and cardio programming, that is what we will do. The main point being if we cannot create habits to meet our goals, we will fail. We must find a way, however necessary, to fit it "AROUND" our lives for most people.
Individualization can be summarized by quotes like, "We don't plan to fail, we fail to plan." And my personal favorite, "The difference between a dream and goal is plan."
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