top of page
SPORT SPECIFIC
What is Sports Specfic?
If you’re like me you love to play sport, the competitive challenge of testingyour skills and physical attributes against a worthy opponent.
Sport is a fastpaced affair- and anyone who plays sport loves the speed of the game. I was recently talking to one of my coaches and he was raving about some of the more ‘sport specific’ speed drills and medicine ball drills he saw me doing with some tennis players. I was worried that his take away message was that all tennis players should be doing for training is just very specific speed and strength drills. This debate is a bit like the one about free play and fitness where it is argued
5 Top Tips for Getting Fit for Sport
Tip 1- Do a fitness test
Seek out a sports performance specialist such as a UKSCA accredited strength & conditioning coachwho can assess your current levels in sport specific fitness.
Tip 2- Do Strength training
Let’s not forget that the demands from most sports place very high stresses on the body. Most peopleare not well conditioned to cope with these demands, but they can be handled better by doingappropriate strength training.
Tip 3- Do speed training
To fully develop speed and power you also need to train these attributes in isolation when you’re freshto maximise their capacities. Playing sport isn’t enough.
Tip 4- Work on addressing your imbalances
To develop sport specific fitness without maintaining general fitness across all these parameters canlead to physical imbalances and even injuries. Most sports are one sided or over work certain musclesfrom repetitive use. So it is important to do work outside of the sport to correct these imbalances byfollowing an injury prevention programme.
Tip 5- Plan your workouts
Working on general and sport specific fitness doesn’t mean you need to do seven different workouts to develop all the fitness attributes. Many fitness activities work one or more of these attributes at thesame time. You just need a qualified coach to help you put the training programme together.
General Fitness
Heading 5
General fitness is also known as Health related Fitness and incorporates five key aspects- cardiovascular endurance, muscular endurance, muscular strength, flexibility and body composition (the proportion of muscleand fat you have).
To be truly fit- either for everyday living or for sports performance- requires that all these elements are worked on and are either maintained at a healthy level or are continually improved beyond thatlevel.
Sport Specific Fitness
Being fit for sport means being able to meet the physical demands of that sport. This can be thought of sport
specific fitness.
To be fit for sport involves additional sport specific skills and physical attributes such as speed and power but
these should be developed on top of a broad base of general fitness.
Athletes with high levels of preparedness will already have high levels of general fitness. I like to think of it as
they have already filled their bucket of motor potential to the top.
bottom of page