In my case, I decided over the summer (as I was fixing a problem with my nutrition) that it would be an ideal time to focus on building some size and strength. In late 2016 I injured my back and really hadn’t been able to do much weight training through most of 2017.

We have a saying here: everything costs something. If you want to enhance some part of your performance, you should be prepared to suffer some short term (or even long term) consequences to other aspects of fitness and performance. There is almost always a trade off.

In my case, I decided over the summer (as I was fixing a problem with my nutrition) that it would be an ideal time to focus on building some size and strength. In late 2016 I injured my back and really hadn’t been able to do much weight training through most of 2017.

I felt good enough last January to start incorporating some weightlifting into my training again. Over the course of my injury I’d dropped from 175lbs to the high 160s, losing a lot of strength and muscle along with the weight.

The Cost of Specificity

In order to maximize my ability to put on size, I had to drop my cardiovascular training. I simply couldn’t afford the caloric expenditure inherent in high intensity power endurance work. This is the cost of specificity.

As an experienced, trained athlete, I couldn’t optimally chase two things at once. To get bigger and stronger, I had to sacrifice some elements of my training and pour my energy into my nutrition and especially my recovery practices.

So, I tracked every meal I ate and I tracked every rep of every workout I did. I put my bike away for the summer. I walked a lot less. I commited myself to getting at least 8 hours of sleep every night.

Basically, I lifted weights, I ate food, I rested, I recovered, and I took two days off every week. As a very active person who is passionate about fitness, this was not easy for me to do. But it was necessary for me to achieve my goals.

I knew that putting on 20-25lbs would be hugely beneficial to me in terms of strength and power. After all, it takes mass to move mass. I knew I would see some immediate results, and I have.

I was expecting a short term drop in my power endurance and cardiovascular fitness, but interestingly, I’ve PR’d most everything I’ve attempted during this massing phase, including my 100m row (15.5) 250m row (39.8) 500m row (1:27) and 10 minutes of max calories on the assault bike (205). I wasn’t necessarily expecting this kind of performance after taking nearly four months off from any kind of cardiovascular training.

But, these are mostly short, power events. The 10 minute test on the assault bike was very surprising as it’s a longer power endurance event, but there have been some definite trade-offs as my power to weight ratio has changed, so workouts like “Jonescrawl” and “Jonestown Sprint” would be much harder than they were four months ago.

Workouts like these will eventually improve with targeted training as I make adaptations to my new size and strength. After all, you have to carry your engine. Yes, my engine is pretty big, but my frame has just become that much bigger.

Any specialization phase will result in some temporary tradeoffs. To make specific adaptations you must be willing to make short term sacrifices.

Commit yourself to making the progress you want in the area of fitness (or aesthetics) you’re targeting, and then bring up the other attributes when appropriate. Beginners can make adaptations across the board concurrently, but experienced, trained athletes will have to sacrifice something in the pursuit of the desired, specific outcome.

The post Specificity appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Charles is here on a weekly basis to help you cut through the B.S. and get some real perspective regarding health and training. Please post feedback or questions to Charles directly in the comments below this article.

At a recent powerlifting clinic, the presenter told the attendees that a certain exercise was “not specific to powerlifting.” What was the implication of that statement? Does it mean the exercise should be avoided?

Many experts consider specificity to be the overarching training principle that both defines and confines the remaining principles. I believe this, too. It’s important to understand what exercises have the most positive transfer to your chosen sport or goal (as I discussed in this article). At the same time, a lack of obvious specificity is not a reason to avoid an exercise altogether.

In fact, many “non-specific” drills can be enormously beneficial, as long as they are properly selected, appropriately timed in the training cycle, and performed at the optimal dose. Let’s take a look at these three criteria.

The Finer Points of Specificity

Selection: The degree of specificity, by itself, is not a useful indicator of whether or not a particular exercise will enhance performance. A better way to assess the value of any exercise is to ask whether or not that exercise helps you to address a specific training need, such as relative muscle weakness, speed-strength, postural alignment, injury-proofing, or core strength-endurance, just to name a few.

In other words, the exercises you select should be specific to your physical needs or weak areas, not necessarily the ultimate competitive goal. To use the sport of weightlifting as an example, exercises like hip thrusts, kettlebell swings, and pull ups can be good choices to improve the body’s mechanical function, even though they aren’t specific to the snatch or clean and jerk.

Timing: This is probably the most important consideration when it comes to placement of “non-specific” exercises. As a rule, the closer you get to competition day, the more specific to your ultimate competitive objective your training should be. That’s not to say that a distance runner shouldn’t be doing non-specific work like lifting weights when he’s three weeks away from a race, but it does mean he should be doing much less of it than he might do when he’s sixteen weeks away from competition.

Dose: Exercise dosage is closely tied to timing, and refers to the volume of a given exercise within a workout or training phase. During the off-season, highly specific drills are reduced to maintenance volumes while less specific, foundational attributes and skills are being developed. Conversely, non-specific drills are done less frequently in season. For instance, a cyclist in the offseason may include a large dose of single-leg strength exercises. But by the spring race season, those will have largely given way to on-bike training.

An exercise can be considered specific to you based on your needs, even if it doesn’t seem specific to your sport.

Applying the Principles of Specificity

The selection of any exercise depends on how it contributes to the goals of your current training cycle. If it targets an area of weakness that’s constraining your overall performance, it can be considered specific in the sense that it’s addressing a hole in your game.

Let’s say you are a shoulder/tricep dominant powerlifter with relatively weak pectoral muscles. By any definition, cable crossovers aren’t terribly specific to the bench press event in powerlifting. But if we apply the principles we discussed above, their specificity for you emerges:

• Selection: Crossovers contribute to greater pectoral size and strength, which positively contribute to bench press performance.
• Timing: This exercise would be particularly appropriate during a hypertrophy phase, which is never close to a competition.
• Dose: The volume can be relatively high compared to specific bench press work during this phase.

Bottom Line: Specificity requires context. Just because something isn’t specific to your competition day goal doesn’t mean it has no utility for you.

This Week’s Training:

Volume: 97,129lb (Last Week: 68,887lb)

I’m back to high reps this week, for what I anticipate to be a five-week cycle. I’ve deliberately chosen a handful of less familiar (or totally unfamiliar) exercises for increased novelty:

• Safety Squats: This movement allows me to attain the best combination of depth and upright posture of any type of squat (except perhaps goblet squats, which are difficult to load).
• Leg Press: I’m maintaining my lordotic arch and spreading my knees on the descent for maximum range of motion.
• Trap Bar: If you watch the video below, you’ll see I’m managing much more leg drive than I typically do on barbell pulls.
• Hammer Machines: These feel uncomfortable and awkward, but also difficult, so I’m prepared to give them a fair shot for five weeks.
• Machine Bench Press: Even 50lb for sets of 8 was very difficult for me. If you’ve got one of these in your gym, take it for a spin. I think you’ll be surprised.
• Leg Press Calf Raise: Not liking the feel of these, to be honest, but we’ll see if I warm up to them.

Monday, February 29, 2016

Bodyweight: 202.2lb

Volume: 27,235lb

Goblet Squat

• Set 1: 30lb × 10
• Set 2: 60lb × 10
• Set 3: 60lb × 10

Safety Squat

• Set 1: 65lb × 10
• Set 2: 115lb × 6
• Set 3: 160lb × 10
• Set 4: 160lb × 10
• Set 5: 160lb × 10
• Set 6: 160lb × 10 (Video Below)

Leg Press

• Set 1: 90lb × 10
• Set 2: 180lb × 8
• Set 3: 270lb × 6
• Set 4: 335lb × 10
• Set 5: 335lb × 10

Trap Bar Deadlift

• Set 1: 135lb × 10
• Set 2: 225lb × 5
• Set 3: 270lb × 5
• Set 4: 270lb × 5

Seated Calf Raise

• Set 1: 90lb × 8
• Set 2: 90lb × 8
• Set 3: 90lb × 8

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Bodyweight: 200lb

Volume: 23,305lb

Bench Press

• Set 1: 45lb × 10
• Set 2: 95lb × 8
• Set 3: 135lb × 6
• Set 4: 180lb × 10
• Set 5: 180lb × 10
• Set 6: 180lb × 10
• Set 7: 180lb × 10

Chin Up

• Set 1: 5 reps
• Set 2: +10lb × 7
• Set 3: +10lb × 7

Hammer Iso-Lateral Incline press

• Set 1: 90lb × 10
• Set 2: 145lb × 7
• Set 3: 145lb × 7
• Set 4: 145lb × 7

Hammer Iso-Lateral Shoulder Press

• Set 1: 50lb × 10
• Set 2: 90lb × 10
• Set 3: 90lb × 10
• Set 4: 90lb × 10

Dual Cable Low Cable Curl

• Set 1: 100lb × 10
• Set 2: 100lb × 10
• Set 3: 100lb × 10

Thursday, March 3, 2016

Bodyweight: 201.2lb

Volume: 33,989lb

Goblet Squat

• Set 1: 30lb × 10
• Set 2: 30lb × 10
• Set 3: 30lb × 10

Trap Bar Deadlift

• Set 1: 135lb × 10
• Set 2: 185lb × 8
• Set 3: 225lb × 6
• Set 4: 275lb × 4
• Set 5: 315lb × 8
• Set 6: 315lb × 10 (Video Below)
• Set 7: 315lb × 8
• Set 8: 315lb × 8

Hack Squat

• Set 1: 90lb × 8
• Set 2: 140lb × 8
• Set 3: 190lb × 8
• Set 4: 190lb × 8
• Set 5: 190lb × 8

45° Back Extension

• Set 1: +130lb × 8
• Set 2: +130lb × 8

Leg Press Calf Raise

• Set 1: 180lb × 10
• Set 2: 180lb × 10
• Set 3: 180lb × 10

Friday, March 4, 2016

Bodyweight: 200.2lb

Volume: 12,600lb

Seated Row

• Set 1: 140lb × 8
• Set 2: 165lb × 8
• Set 3: 165lb × 8

Bench Press (Dumbbell)

• Set 1: 100lb × 10
• Set 2: 140lb × 8
• Set 3: 170lb × 8
• Set 4: 170lb × 8

Chest Press Machine 

• Set 1: 50lb × 8
• Set 2: 50lb × 8

Lying Dumbbell Tricep Extension

• Set 1: 60lb × 8
• Set 2: 70lb × 8
• Set 3: 70lb × 8

Bicep Curl (Dumbbell)

• Set 1: 60lb × 8
• Set 2: 70lb × 8
• Set 3: 70lb × 8

More Foundational Training Principles:

• The Essential Ingredients of a Solid Strength Program
• Progression Takes More Than Adding Weight to the Bar
• If It Feels Bad, Do It
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Specificity: It’s All About Context appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

A reader asked this very useful question on last week’s post:

“I read an article that essentially said never to do a calf raise again, as they are entirely ineffective for an athlete. Other articles on this site have shown how ineffective lifting is via machines, (E.g. leg press, triceps pull down). I can tell you love very specific exercises, even the ones I mentioned above. Any feedback on your approach?”

If you’d asked me this question five years ago, I would have delivered a convincing argument about how useless, or even detrimental single-joint and machine exercises are for athletes. The narrative goes something like this: single-joint (or “isolation”) movements are not specific to complex athletic skills that require the coordination of several different muscle groups. Resistance training machines are similarly useless, since they force you to push a weight over a predetermined movement path. This means that you’re not required to control the weight, you only need to push or pull against it.

Back when I believed this line of reasoning, I was simply being a hammer. I was skilled in free weight exercises, and so everything I said and did needed to fit that particular narrative. 

Today, I think differently. I now realize that I was simply highlighting one particular flaw and using it to dismiss a whole category of exercises – machines – that didn’t happen to fit my personal world view. A more honest assessment is that all exercises have specific benefits and drawbacks. They’re simply tools that have utility in some situations, but not in others.

Cost-To-Benefit Ratio

Understanding the “cost-to-benefit ratio” of non-sport-specific training exercises is important here. Put simply, while two exercises may have very similar benefits, they may have entirely different costs. 

Referring back to the example I gave in last week’s column, Olympic weightlifting may have benefits in terms of developing strength and power. But weightlifting also has significant costs, including a long learning curve compared to other similarly beneficial drills. It’s important to appreciate that every time an athlete performs any type of supplementary training, he or she is diverting resources away that might be better spent practicing the sport itself.

This means that smart athletes and coaches think not only in terms of effectiveness (fulfilling an objective), but also in terms of efficiency (considering the cost-to-benefit ratio of achieving that goal). Effectiveness and efficiency for a given physical goal will determine whether a particular exercise, such as a calf raise, should be selected.

Seeking Positive Transfer

Central to this entire discussion is the concept of transfer. Transfer runs across a spectrum from negative transfer to positive transfer. When you develop strength using a specific exercise, or class of exercises, does the strength help your chosen sport (positive), have no effect, or hinder your goal (negative)? What we’re looking for is the greatest degree of positive transfer we can achieve. 

Positive transfer is the idea that you can improve the strength of one skill or activity by improving your strength on another skill or activity. Think back to the first time you ever did a set of bench presses. You were strong enough to lift some amount of weight, despite the fact that you’d never done this exercise before. So where did that strength come from?

In short, it came from all the other activities that you’ve done over the years. That means everything from throwing balls, to lifting everyday objects for various reasons, to more organized physical activities that you’ve done in school. Wherever that strength came from, it didn’t come from bench pressing. 

Anything that contributed to your muscular development, no matter how dissimilar it might seem from bench pressing, contributed to your first ever bench press session. So transfer does exist. It’s a matter of finding exercises that have the greatest positive transfer for the lowest possible cost.

Specificity Can Be Deceiving

Let’s say you’re a professional fighter, and you need more powerful punches. You decide to do some strength training for that expressed purpose. You’ve got a whole bunch of options: you could do barbell bench presses, push ups on rings, machine chest presses, explosive (as in clapping) push ups from the floor, punching while holding dumbbells – the list is endless.

What exercise should you do? In terms of specificity, it certainly seems as though the machine chest press would be least specific, and punching with dumbbells would be the most specific. But in the latter, the angle of resistance is perpendicular to the direction of force needed for a punch. By contrast, a machine chest press may guide the fighter’s movement more closely along the arc of a punch, and provide resistance parallel to that arc.

The lesson here is that things that seem to be specific often are not. Attempts to mimic a sport skill by performing that skill against resistance often hurt more than they help.

Specificity in strength training requires resistance against the intended plane of motion. A machine might be the best way to achieve this.

The Problem With Too Much Similarity

When athletes attempt to mimic sport skills in the weight room, they can run into another problem. When an assistance exercise is very similar, but not exactly the same as the skill you’re trying to strengthen, you develop what coaches and motor-control specialists call “neural cross-contamination.” You’ve probably experienced this when you rented a car. After driving that rental for several days, when you go back to your own car, everything is a bit of a struggle. You go to insert the key into the ignition, but you miss. You reach for the gearshift, but it isn’t there. You apply the brakes and almost go into a skid.

Your initial struggles after returning to your own car are evidence of neural cross-contamination. After driving a similar (but still different) vehicle for several days, your own car is suddenly unfamiliar. Would this have happened if you’d rented a motorcycle or a boat for several days? No, because those vehicles are very different from your own car, so no cross-contamination will occur.

The most effective approach is to first make your body stronger using generalized exercises such as the ones I advocated for in my recent post for fighters. The less sport-specific your strength training movements are, the better off you’ll be. Then, during your sport practice sessions, as opposed to during your strength training workouts, your body will learn to use this new strength in a sport-specific sense.

This Week’s Training:

Volume: 68,887lb (Last Week: 77,585lb)

Significant Lifts:

• Squat: 315×5, 365×1
• Deadlift: 455×1, 405×7
• Military Press: 143×3

This is the last week of low reps before returning to higher rep work. My next cycle will be five weeks in duration, as I think deloading every four weeks is probably a bit too frequent for me. I’ll also be using more machines than usual just as a change of pace, and also lots of quad and tricep work to address my weak links. Overall, my strength levels are really good as of late, as you’ll see in this week’s log.

My weekly split for the next five weeks will look something like this:

Bodyweight: 200.4lb

Volume: 21,145lb

Goblet Squat

• Set 1: 30lb × 10

Low Bar Squat

• Set 1: 45lb × 5
• Set 2: 45lb × 5
• Set 3: 95lb × 5
• Set 4: 95lb × 5
• Set 5: 135lb × 5
• Set 6: 185lb × 5
• Set 7: 225lb × 3
• Set 8: 275lb × 1
• Set 9: 315lb × 5 (Video Below)
• Set 10: 365lb × 1
• Set 11: 275lb × 3

Deadlift

• Set 1: 198lb × 5
• Set 2: 226lb × 5
• Set 3: 226lb × 5
• Set 4: 248lb × 5

Seated Leg Curl

• Set 1: 130lb × 8
• Set 2: 130lb × 8
• Set 3: 145lb × 8

Standing Calf Raise

• Set 1: 200lb × 8
• Set 2: 200lb × 8
• Set 3: 200lb × 8
• Set 4: 200lb × 8

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Bodyweight: 198.8lb

Volume: 11,380lb

Bench Press

• Set 1: 45lb × 10
• Set 2: 95lb × 8
• Set 3: 135lb × 6
• Set 4: 185lb × 4
• Set 5: 205lb × 2
• Set 6: 225lb × 1
• Set 7: 225lb × 2
• Set 8: 225lb × 3
• Set 9: 225lb × 1
• Set 10: 225lb × 2
• Set 11: 225lb × 3
• Set 12: 225lb × 1
• Set 13: 225lb × 2
• Set 14: 225lb × 3

Lying Dumbbell Tricep Extension

• Set 1: 50lb × 8
• Set 2: 70lb × 8
• Set 3: 70lb × 8
• Set 4: 70lb × 8

EZ Bar Curl

• Set 1: 65lb × 8
• Set 2: 65lb × 8
• Set 3: 65lb × 8
• Set 4: 65lb × 8

Thursday, February 25, 2016

Bodyweight: 198.8lb

Volume: 22,675lb

Deadlift

• Set 1: 135lb × 5
• Set 2: 185lb × 5
• Set 3: 225lb × 5
• Set 4: 275lb × 5
• Set 5: 315lb × 5
• Set 6: 365lb × 3
• Set 7: 405lb × 1
• Set 8: 450lb × 1 (Video Below)
• Set 9: 405lb × 7 (Video Below)

Trap Bar Deadlift

• Set 1: 135lb × 5
• Set 2: 135lb × 5
• Set 3: 225lb × 5
• Set 4: 315lb × 5

Hack Squat

• Set 1: 90lb × 8
• Set 2: 140lb × 8
• Set 3: 160lb × 8
• Set 4: 180lb × 8
• Set 5: 180lb × 8

Seated Calf Raise

• Set 1: 90lb × 8
• Set 2: 90lb × 8
• Set 3: 90lb × 8

Friday, February 26, 2016

Bodyweight: 201.2lb

Volume: 13,687lb

Military Press

• Set 1: 45lb × 10
• Set 2: 65lb × 8
• Set 3: 88lb × 6
• Set 4: 110lb × 4
• Set 5: 132lb × 3
• Set 6: 143lb × 3

Pull Up

• Set 1: 5 reps
• Set 2: 5 reps
• Set 3: 5 reps
• Set 4: 5 reps

Hammer Iso-Lateral Incline press

• Set 1: 90lb × 10
• Set 2: 110lb × 8
• Set 3: 140lb × 8

Dual Cable Low Cable Curl

• Set 1: 100lb × 8
• Set 2: 100lb × 8
• Set 3: 100lb × 8
• Set 4: 100lb × 8
• Set 5: 100lb × 8

More Explorations of Popular Training Theories:

• Do Similar Exercises and Drills Transfer to Specific Sport Skills?
• Cross Training Doesn’t Work
• Use the Scientific Method to Take Control of Your Training
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

Photo 1 courtesy of Shutterstock.

Photo 2 courtesy of joyfull / Shutterstock.

The post Don’t Dismiss Machines for Athletic Strength appeared first on Breaking Muscle.