A Look Back at Sport Specific Training VS Durability Training

ere is a post from a few months ago in regards to sports training. I had a conversation with one of my students about the different training modalities. He had some great questions about the differences in vertical jumping programs. It reminded me of this post we had about sports training.

I do not want to sound as though sports training has not become incredibly advanced, it has. The drills trainers can use these days are truly amazing and are the product of decades worth of trial and error and incredible amounts of testing. Nike’s Sparq Training for example has a testing process for each of the major sports. They run you through a series of tests. Then they train you and retest you to show you how much you have improved. Great system but you have to ask the question of how can you be sure that simply improving on the tests translates into improved performance on the field. The idea is fantastic and there is no question that the training will make you better at the drills.

I met a trainer who became certified as a Sparq trainer and gave me a great analogy. He said that if you wanted to become better at math you could devise a series of tests and then make problems that would ensure that the next time the person took the same test, they would show drastic improvement. The problem was is that there is so much more depth to the subject that is not covered, there are holes in their knowledge. He said he felt the same way about sports training, that we can show improvement in various components of athleticism but that due to the complexities of the human body, they develop holes. Sounds a lot like aBody type #2 doesn’t it.

The complexity of the human body means that the training you do must also reach a level that allows every muscle fiber the opportunity to receive the stimulus it needs to do the job it is intended to do. Click on the video below and then we will discuss them.

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In these videos the athletes are doing what I know consider “Sport Specific Training”. The specificity of training using all of the agility ladders, and cones, and hurdles, and every other of the hundreds of tools trainers become dependent on has made our athletes actually move much less fluid than they should. Does that type of demand have a place in sports training, absolutely. The problem is it needs to be a supplement to a much more efficient form of training, efficiency training. All of the drills designed for the agility ladder are great but really at the end of a 20 minutes session of it you have just done massive repetition of the exact same thing.

Now like I have tried to encourage all of you to become, a worst case scenario trainer, what are the potential negative side effects of doing high levels of repetition of the same stimulus to the muscular system? In the case of the agility ladder, it is  very tight hips. The downside of developing tightness in the hips? A reduction in efficiency of the muscular system that will reduce your natural ability to move, and increase your risk of creating an imbalance that can lead to injury.

I encourage all trainers to think outside of the box and get away from the normal repetition drills every once in awhile. Train for durability first, performance second.