Stop imitating the sport: what specificity really means

"It has to be specific." Probably the most used — and most misunderstood — phrase in strength and conditioning. It's often used to justify an exercise that looks like the sport, without ever stating which problem it solves. An exercise is relevant if it addresses a clearly identified problem, with a controllable dose, and if we know which signal to watch to keep it, change it or drop it.

The trap: specific vs similar-looking

The logic is seductive: if an exercise looks like the sporting action, it should transfer better. Sometimes true. But visual similarity tells us nothing about which problem the exercise solves, whether the stimulus is sufficient, or whether the sport already provides a better version of that action. Training-transfer research (Issurin, Sports Med 2013) is clear: transfer depends on the overlap of qualities trained and the dose, not on movement resemblance.

A small-sided football game looks exactly like football, yet guarantees no exposure to maximal speed. A knee extension looks like no match action at all — and may still be the cleanest way to load the quadriceps of an athlete who genuinely needs it. The right question isn't "is it specific?" but "specific to what, and for which problem?"

The intervention pyramid: individualise only when you have a reason

Mladen Jovanović's framework places the reason for intervening before the choice of exercise. Start general, and add precision only when the available information justifies it.

Key point in our practice: the Full Test gives a first snapshot and lets us build a hypothesis. It doesn't give a definitive truth about the athlete. Individualisation must then be earned through information: training response, test progression, club load, match minutes, pain, sleep, availability and behaviour under fatigue.

Classify the problem before correcting the athlete

In open sports, a poor action doesn't automatically mean a poor physical quality. A player late on a defensive transition may lack speed — or may start from a bad position, read the play too late, follow an impossible tactical instruction, or all of the above.

Three concrete examples

1. Footballer lacking maximal speed. The club provides plenty of accelerations, decelerations and play, but the player rarely exceeds 90-95 % of his top speed. Adding "specific" small-sided games just adds what he already does. Controlled maximal sprint exposure — also protective for the hamstrings (Haugen, 2019) — is more relevant, even though it looks less like the game.

2. Return-to-sport with a quadriceps deficit. After a knee injury, making every exercise "functional" too early dilutes the stimulus. If the identified problem is insufficient local quadriceps capacity, a heavy knee extension or a long isometric has a very clear job. Reintegrating jumps, braking and changes of direction comes afterwards — the logic of criteria-based return-to-sport frameworks (Buckthorpe, 2019).

3. Ice hockey player with a poor first stride. A weak first push on ice may come from a strength or power deficit, insufficient exposure to certain speeds, but also from skating technique and timing. Our job is to check what is modifiable off the ice — and not to turn the gym into a fake rink.

The 6-question audit before adding an exercise

What changes on Monday morning

A note on evidence: the intervention pyramid is a coaching framework, not a systematic review. Its value lies in the quality of the questions it forces you to ask before programming; the biomechanical and clinical claims that follow must be verified separately in the literature.