P&P#42

P&P #42. Specifity May Not Be As Specific As It Is Presumed To Be.

Considerable research shows that specific training produces specific results. Long duration cardiovascular (CV) training produces an athlete who is cardiovascularly fit and efficient, though CV training tends to lower power and strength in competitive weightlifters and track- and-fielders. Power ('speed-strength') or strength training produce specific growth in power or strength. The principle of specificity has been shown to apply to velocity, range or region of movement, type of muscle contraction, movement pattern, metabolism, flexibility regime, muscle fibre recruitment and biochemical adaptation.

Thus, specificity makes one more adapted to a particular regime of training and less adapted to others. In evolutionary terms, adaptation occurs to ensure the survival of a given organism. So, more specificity means less generality, and organisms are doomed to survive only under very restricted conditions! Presumably, specific adaptation is a more efficient way of surviving and adapting to the environment.

Why are organisms not more plastic, so that adaptation is much more rapidly gained and modified under a much wider range of circumstances? Or is this a flaw in evolutionary theory, namely that evolutionary adaptation makes each life form less likely to survive if there is an unexpected change in environmental conditions?

In sports, attempts to devise a system of training to simultaneously and equally develop strength, speed, power, endurance, etc have not yet proved very successful. Plastic training rather than specific training would make for more effective and versatile competitors, so why has life doomed us to cope with the apparent disadvantages of specificity? One might say thatthe phenomenon of specificity is more economical, but we might respond by asking if the benefits of specificity outweigh its disadvantages.

We must ask: "How specific is specific in training?". If specificity of adaptation were 100% total in one fitness factor or motor quality, then one would collapse or die rapidly on exposure to a task requiring another form of specifity. We then have to postulate that a certain degree of overlap must exist between all forms of adaptation, else survival or operation without damage or demise would be a very real possibility. We then have to ask questions such as:

"How specific is strength specificity, velocity specificity, CV specificity and so forth?". For instance,we know that strength adaptation carries over some benefits to strength-endurance tasks and power tasks.

Similar co-adaptability or overlap occurs with other forms of fitness or motor capability. The question is by how much and how can this be estimated. Russian scientists employ flow diagrams showing cross-correlations between important motor qualities and each sporting event or action (Unfortunately, I cannot include on this e-mailing a diagram of this method, but it is described in the book: Siff M C & Verkhoshansky: Supertraining (1996).

Comment on the above issues raised by the concept of specificity.

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