Over the next few weeks there will be a new guest blogger at YSC! The trainers at TrueFitness in San Diego, CA will be sharing a rugby focused training post each week on Wednesdays. We would like to formally welcome Annalise to YSC!
Without a doubt there are two priorities when creating a workout program for anyone. ANYONE! These two priorities are the Principles of Overload and Specificity.
The Principle of Overload states that in order to create change within a system we must present a stimulus greater than was presented before. In plain English this means that we have to do more than we did before in order to force the body to get better. More meaning that we have to push our body to its limits. Put in more work today and we can get more out of it tomorrow.
The Principle of Specificity states that change will be directly related to the type of stimulus. In plain English this means that your training program must consist of movements, exercises, and techniques as close to your goal as possible. The speed of training needs to be game speed in order to get better at game speed. The exercises should train movements that are used during the sport. Coupling speed and exercises together in a proper manner will ensure that an athlete is truly getting ready for sports performance.
So every workout needs to be created with these two principles in mind. You need to make sure that your limits are pushed. Working to fatigue is ALWAYS the goal. Your body can be fatigued in many ways; aerobically, strength, power, conditioning, mentally, visually and many more. We can do this by manipulating a myriad of variables not limited to; Exercises, Exercise Order, Sets, Weight, Reps, Rest, Velocity, and types of workouts, i.e. Plyometrics, Agility, and Resistance training. This will push your body to overload and ensure that your body is always getting stronger, faster, quicker and better.
The human body gets better through recovery. This is the reason we need our rest. So we must push our body to work to fatigue (overload) to force the body to repair. We want this repair to be specific to our goal of getting better at our sport. So we include the skills required to play our sport (specificity). As stated before, we do these with movements that mimic game speed and strengthen the muscles used in our sport. This ensures proper specificity and when we add the overload, we are working toward improving our sports performance.
A great two part question to ask yourself during every workout: Am I doing more today to make myself better and is it directly related to my goals?
Please feel free to call or email Annalise Evans of TrueFitness with any questions: (760) 809 1848 annalise@truefitness.biz and join her fan page on Facebook: TrueFitness Annalise Evans.
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Awesome article, Spencer…
I would like to note two more variable that can be manipulated when progressing a movement. They are 1.) Modify he base of support, (wide, narrow, stagger, single leg, stable/unstable with bosu, ball, wobble boards) 2.) Change direction or plane, (concentric to eccentric, isometric, sagital, frontal and transverse) Changing direction would require manual resistance provided by the trainer or work out partner. (example, the client doing a bicep curl, on the eccentric movement the triner would lightly provide resistance and the client would have to use force to return to the down point)