Is Sport-Specific Training a Myth?
by Michael Boyle


Strength training is and always will be a major part of the conditioning
process for athletes. In fact, nothing seems to help sport performance
more than the development of strength and power. This is great news for
those of us who've made a career out of helping athletes reach those
goals.
But even though we all agree about the importance of strength training,
and even though there's some general consensus about the best ways
to improve athletes' strength and power, debates have raged for
years about the specifics. One particularly contentious debate is over
the very idea that there are specifics for training players in
individual sports.
Athletes and their parents or coaches love to hear that a particular
exercise is good for a particular sport. It makes strength and conditioning
specialists like me sound like we know what we're talking about,
and it gives athletes confidence in our ability to help them with their
individual needs.
Plus, let's be honest about this: The guys who write for fitness
magazines love you when they're assigned articles called "The
Best Exercise for Every Sport" and you can actually supply them
with material that pleases their editors and helps them get paid.
So it's in my best interest to tell people that such things as "sport-specific
training" and "sport-specific exercises" actually exist.
But is it true?
Let's think about what we're asking here:
Say I'm training two high school kids. One's a cornerback
on the football team, and one's a center fielder on the baseball
team. Both are fast and would benefit by being even faster. Both would
benefit by being stronger and developing more power. Both want to add
some muscular size, but not at the expense of their speed or agility.
Do I train them differently, even though their goals are basically the
same?
In the most fundamental sense, the answer is no. The best methods to
develop speed and power are somewhat universal.
However, there is a catch. Although it's dubious to say that certain
exercises are better for certain sports, I think it's fair to say
that some exercises are worse for athletes who play particular
sports.


You need more strength and power in some sports, but the way you build
it doesn't change.


Should Basketball Players Squat?
Those in the hard-core crowd love to bang square pegs into round holes.
One size fits all. If the squat is a great exercise, it must be great
for every athlete in every situation. I was one of those guys for years,
forcing my basketball players to squat, and searching endlessly for ways
to help them learn the right technique.
But then I figured something out: There's a limiting factor in
squatting, which I call segmental proportion. What I realized was that
athletes with long femurs relative to the length of the torso will be
lousy squatters. These guys were almost always forwards or centers, six-feet-five
or taller.
But it's not just about height — some tall basketball players
are actually very good squatters. And before you launch into keyboard-commando
mode in the discussion thread, let me assure you that these segmentally
challenged athletes don't lack desire or put out less effort than
anyone else.
The problem is that a guy with these proportions needs an extreme forward
lean when he squats, making it look like he's doing a good morning.
He'll generally be frustrated with his inability to do the exercise
correctly, and may suffer back pain.
Eventually, I could identify these athletes before we got anywhere near
the squat rack. Basketball players with exceptionally long femurs always
look short sitting down. I remember sitting next to one and realizing
that, despite the fact he was eight inches taller than me, we were eye-to-eye
in a chair.
My advice to athletes and fellow coaches: If you or an athlete you train
is built proportionally and can squat with good form, go for it. If the
athlete is "all legs," be careful: You're looking at a
square peg.


Beware of the segmentally disadvantaged squatter.
The problem of segmental proportions isn't exclusive to basketball
players anymore. In the past five or six years I've seen a growing
number of offensive linemen in football who have what I call "basketball
builds." They tend to be 6'5" or taller, with long legs
and relatively short torsos.
Everyone knows football players in general, and linemen in particular,
should squat early and often. But this square peg/round hole training
methodology leaves a lot of the taller linemen with back and knee problems.
The back issues are exacerbated by the fact they play positions requiring
spinal extension.

Good solutions for bad leverage:
For strength, use front squats, belt squats, single-leg squats, single-leg
squats with the rear foot elevated (also called Bulgarian split squats),
and/or trap-bar deadlifts.
For power, try Olympic lifts from the hang position above the knees,
along with Vertimax jumps.

Final thought:
Physics rule in all sports. The reason there are so few short NBA players
is the same reason there are so few tall Olympic lifters. It's much
easier for a short person to do an Olympic lift from the floor than it
is for a tall person. Keep this in mind if you're unusually tall,
or train tall athletes. The diameter of a plate is constant; it gives
short athletes good leverage and puts tall ones at a disadvantage.


Should Overhead Athletes Do Overhead Lifts?
Swimmers, baseball players, football quarterbacks, and tennis and volleyball
players would seem to have little in common as athletes. Until, that
is, you work with enough of them as a strength coach. That's when
you notice a common predisposition to shoulder injuries, particularly
rotator cuff tendonitis. Why? Because their sports require repetitive
activities with their hands above their heads.
So the simple and logical fix is to avoid most overhead exercises. It's
not that the athletes can't do them; the problem is the amount of
time they already spend with their arms above their shoulders. Overuse
is the enemy of the overhead athlete.


Too much overhead action can bring big problems ... not that any
flaws are visible from this particular angle.
That said, not all overhead exercises are equally damaging. We'll
do shoulder presses with dumbbells, but not with a barbell. We also avoid
snatches and overhead squats, along with behind-the-neck exercises, which
we don't do with anyone. (This is old news, but the behind-the-neck
position, which involves extreme abduction and external rotation, isn't
really safe for any type of athlete, and it's especially dangerous
for people whose sport involves serving, spiking, or pitching.)

Staying away from bars:
Barbells aren't conducive to good shoulder health. Because they
don't bend or rotate, they determine the mechanics of the shoulder
joint, something you never want an unyielding hunk of iron to control.
Ten years ago we didn't have many choices, and used bars for overhead
athletes out of necessity. Now we just use them out of habit, despite
the fact there are so many alternatives.


Just to pick one exercise, most people still use the Smith machine for
inverted rows, or a barbell set low in a squat rack. But I prefer the
TRX,
or gymnastics rings, all of which allow the shoulder joints to move through
their normal spiral-diagonal patterns. Using any of those implements,
you can also do rotational inverted rows, pulling up with one arm at
a time.
Similarly, a lot of cable machines now have dual handles for pulldowns
and rows — a much better option for overhead athletes than straight
bars, which are outdated for pulling exercises and should be used sparingly,
if at all, for pressing. (Dumbbell bench presses — flat or incline — get
the job done.)
With dual handles, you can do this exercise, called an X pulldown:






For power, I like kettlebell overhead swings, since there's no
catch phase to bang up the forearms and lots of eccentric challenge for
the muscles of the upper back. I also like the hang clean for the overhead
athlete, assuming there's enough time to teach proper technique,
as well as the Vertimax, which I mentioned earlier.
Another great tool for the overhead athlete is the medicine ball. I
use it with all my players, to varying degrees, but I consider it essential
for the overhead athlete. Overhead throws with the medicine ball are
one of the best power exercises for these guys, helping them develop
the core power that's so vital to effective throwing. As a bonus,
they offer terrific eccentric work for the rotator cuff.
Two warnings: Use light medicine balls (one or two kilograms) for upper-body
work, and always use two hands. One-arm throws are more "specific" to
what overhead athletes do, but they're also more dangerous.

Final tip:
Overhead athletes almost always need to focus on shoulder flexibility.
The side-lying external-rotation stretch is a good choice. (It's
also called the sleeper stretch, for reasons I don't understand.)
I apologize for the fact the video is missing its audio track, but I
think you can see the technique clearly enough.







I also like wall slides:
Stand with your back against a wall. You want your shoulder blades and
butt touching the wall, and minimal arch in your lower back. Lift your
arms so the backs of your hands and forearms are against the wall. Your
upper arms should be parallel to the floor, more or less, with your elbows
bent 90 degrees. Now slide your arms up and down the wall, without losing
contact with it.
Your range of motion may be short at first, but with work over time
you can expand it.


Can Targeted Exercises Prevent Knee and Groin Injuries?
To a sports fan, soccer and hockey don't seem to have much in common.
But strength and conditioning professionals know that soccer and hockey
players share an unusual risk for sports hernias -- muscle tears in the
lower abdomen. The link is that both sports require athletes to generate
power with their hips in external rotation. (Rugby and tennis players,
to a lesser extent, deal with the same problem.)
Unlike the other two examples in this article, the challenge with hockey
and soccer players is to add exercises to mitigate the problem, rather
than subtract exercises that exacerbate it. Specifically, you want to
add targeted stretches and hip-mobility drills that improve hip internal
rotation.
Soccer players have another injury risk that requires targeted training:
Because they're always up on the balls of their feet, with very
little knee bend, they make adaptive changes over time that leave them
particularly prone to ACL tears. The problem is made worse by a cultural
disdain for strength training.
What God has put together, let no sport tear apart:
Soccer players need to do knee-dominant exercises like squats and single-leg
squats.
Hockey and soccer players — and to a lesser extent tennis and
rugby players — should add some or all of the following: lateral
lunges, rotational squats, slide-board intervals (which you can see in
the background in several of the videos that follow), and progressive
hip-flexion exercises.
One possible progression is shown below. The first video is a supine
alternating hip-flexion exercise with a band:








Next is a supine unilateral hip flexion, using a low cable:







Then we go to a standing hip flexion:







The final exercise combines hip flexion with internal rotation:








In addition, all these athletes should do the stability-ball internal
rotation:









Wrapping It Up
Smart and experienced trainers like to remind gym rats that there's
no such thing as the "best" workout. That's true if we're
talking about building bigger muscles or improving body composition.
But when it comes to training athletes with the goal of increasing their
speed, strength, and power, the opposite is true. There really is a best
way to do it.
The problem is that what works for most athletes isn't a good choice
for every athlete. That's when you have to make specific adjustments
for individual players, or types of players.
Sometimes this means adding targeted exercises to address imbalances
and help prevent injuries. But more often, training specificity is defined
by what you shouldn't do with those special cases — avoiding
exercises and movement patterns that create problems, or that make existing
problems worse.


About the Author

Michael Boyle is the editor of StrengthCoach.com,
a website for coaches interested in serious strength and conditioning.
In addition to speaking and writing, he owns and operates Mike Boyle
Strength and Conditioning. He's also an assistant strength and conditioning
coach at Boston University, responsible for men's ice hockey.



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