Fallacy of Sports Specific Training

[Guest guest]

Got this from bud Jeffries, Isometric strongman,The Fallacy of Sports Specific Training (and How to do it Right)â€There's been an argument within the Olympic lifting, HIT and sports

communities, martial arts and weightlifting groups about the

efficiency of lifting or training for sport: If you do a specific

movement that mimics a sport are you actually going to get a

weighted movement or are you going to get better at that sport or

is it going to mess up your nerve patterns or your specific

technical pattern?

It's been relatively established that there are a few movements

that, because they are similar in nature but not exactly in the

sport specific pattern, that they give you a better general ability

but not more specific to the sport. It is believed that you must

play the specific sport to gain the nerve patterns and ability.

That's why people who grapple or box can hit very hard or wrestle

and be very strong in those positions, even if they don't train

much in other strength movements, because they spend so much time

at high-level contraction in those specific moves.

They can't, however, generally transfer that to other arenas. It's

also why some people who've gained strength in certain types of

strength, especially if it's done in an isolated training fashion

or machine based training, in the weight room but haven't gotten

good on the field or playing mat to improve their performance

during the sport. It's the reason that martial artists, for quite

some time, didn't really believe in lifting weights, because they

didn't see actual improvement in their art.

I believe isometrics can solve much of this problem. It may be, and

if you really look at the martial arts from around the world and

certain sport training, you'll see that isometrics are the only way

to duplicate a sport specific pattern without messing that pattern

up and actually become stronger in that specific range of motion

while you get better at your sport in that particular way.

Let me elaborate - If you take a baseball pitcher, and this is a

classic example of this specific training pattern, and have him

throw heavier weighted baseballs, you do not create a better,

faster pitcher. All you do is create a messed up nerve pattern,

becoming slower and losing control in the pitching.

If you were to take that same pitcher and train each individual

phase of his pitching pattern in the exact motion that he uses with

a ball, but in an isometric contraction, not with a weight, but

against an immoveable object or force - you can exactly mimic that

pattern and force for the body to contract at 100%. Lay every bit

of leverage into every piece of that pattern without messing up the

pattern, because it doesn't work at off speeds, you'd only actually

be pitching with a regular baseball so there's no slow down - It's

only actually teaching the body to contract at the very nerve

pattern, ranges and speeds without throwing it off.

The same applies to kicking, punching, specific strongman

movements, or running movements. They don't always get better if

you try to mimic them with weights, but if you want to get better

at sport specific patterns, figuring out an isometric training

program and exercise that exactly mimics those patterns and

movement without interfering with the speed of the movement or

trying to hold weight in an awkward fashion, can create an amazing

sport specific gain.

This has huge implications for football, throwers, grapplers,

boxers, martial artists and in fact has been done for centuries in

martial arts.