Specificity and S.A.I.D

I like some of the cross fit/circuit training ideas and training modalities and think that they may have an excellent place within some sports conditioning programs. In my opinion this type of training or more specifically, always training to fatigue, whether it is in the gym during a strength training session or out on the field doing conditioning training has become all too common in sports such as rugby. Any monkey can make people tired but that is not the goal in physical training is it?! We are trying to create specific adaptations within the athletes to improve performance and prevent injury.

The SAID (Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand) principle is one of the most basic principles in sports science and means that when the body is placed under a stress, (i.e: possibly a strongman session) it will adapt to that specific task. This is the basis of specificity and by no means should ALL training be based around this principle alone but I think it is often overlooked in programming. Remember, your body will try to become better at exactly what you do in your training.

This information impacts on areas such as metabolic adaptation, neuromuscular adaptation and also motor learning and skill development. Bill Knowles talked recently about a great book called "The Talent Code" which I would recommend to any exercise professional writing programs and more specifically coaching other people. The book talks about the importance of deep practice learning and about the laying down of myelin on our neural pathways. Without spoiling the book for you, the importance of practicing perfect technique cannot be over emphasized and then working as specifically to the movements in our sport then the book tells us that the more we continually practice this way the more we will improve. Bill Knowles also came out with a great saying, "if you can't slow it down then don't speed it up" and this sums up the importance of exercise technique perfectly.

In sports such as rugby there is plenty of research in both union and league detailing energy and metabolic demands of competition and also some excellent data detailing the type of work that each position demands in the modern game. This is absolute gold for planning the training of athletes and should not be overlooked in favour of solely empirical evidence unless you are very experienced and have ridiculous mathematical skills whilst watching games and competition, giving you an ability to calculate work to rest ratios. This should be the basis of conditioning programs and so for example, Grant Duthie has done some excellent research showing us that, “training should focus on repeated brief high-intensity efforts with short rest intervals to condition players to the demands of the game and that training for the forwards should emphasise their higher work rates in the game, while extended rest periods can be provided to the backs.” Sports Medicine, Volume 33, Number 13, 2003, pp. 973-991(19). The differences between forwards and backs are stark in rugby union and they should be conditioned that way. Backs needs to be capable of skills such as sprinting after a kick or making a break and they then inevitably getting a longer break enabling them to recover before repeating. Forwards have shorter rests but importantly shorter skills demands and so sending a forward for a 3 mile run will do little to improve his performance whereas asking him to do 10-20m sprints with short rest in between may well be more effective at mimicking working between rucks in rugby. Work to rest ratios become crucial to this part of planning and the closer these mimic game demands the better.

Anybody can make people tired without even thinking about it but making performance changes is different and requires both a detailed needs analysis and a sound physiological knowledge to be able to program effectively.