If you do a search on YouTube, you can easily find many people perscribing workout plans that seem rather odd. Things such as lifting weights on unstable surfaces to develop balance, throwing punches with resistance bands, pulling sleds and other exercises are all the rage. Especially in sports like Brazilian Jiujitsu, coaches and trainers advocate that their competitive students do activities such as lots of shrimping and timed drills and running to increase cardiovascular capacity. However, I have to ask if this is the most efficient way to improve conditioning for this sport?

This is where specificity comes in. Specificity refers to stimulation causing adaptation. In other words, training in certain ways is more conducive to sport specific progress. For example: running short sprints will prepare the body for competing in the 40 yard dash better than running 15 miles every day. However, many people have taken the concept of specificity and made it into something that it is not. Many people, including fitness trainers, are perpetuating the idea that specificity is about replicating an activity in order to develop conditioning in the activity. This is incorrect. A person does not have to do only jumping movements in order to increase the distance that he (or she) can jump.

Moreover, a person doesn’t have to do only shrimps to improve his ability to do shrimping movements in Jiujitsu. The same could be said about jumping or throwing punches. There are other dynamic exercises that can take your sports performance to the next level.

So lets talk about developing punching power. The old school train of thought is that nothing develops punching power like a punching bag. However, there are exercises and movements that help develop elite punching power that don’t require a punching bag. Examples are:

• diamond push ups
• uneven push ups
• negative bench presses (slow coming down, explode going up)
• L seat kick outs (to strengthen the core. Without a strong core, the power generated in the legs dissipates)

I hope this clears up the misconception that many people have about specificity and hopefully you got something out of this article.

 

Peace

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