Specificity and it’s great importance within programming
There are many factors that impact a client achieving their desired results. Programming is a factor that has great relevance within their journey. What exercises we choose to apply within our programme, including the volume and frequency in which we choose to execute these exercises also has great relevance.
What exercises I choose to apply to a client’s programme matters on many factors, all can be summed up under ‘specificity’.
Specificity outlines the WHY behind exercise selection, WHY do we need to provide an individual with this stimulus and HOW will that impact them.
As coaches, we constantly get asked ‘What’s the best programme for X’ and the truth is, there is no best programme. If it were as easy as providing a stock programme for certain solutions, the process would become much easier! But as humans were all completely individual, with different bone structures, joint capacity, jobs, hobbies and aspirations. In fact, there are probably more inconsistencies within a human body than consistencies so programming has to be completely individualised.
With all of this to consider, I still have someone in front of me who wants to achieve a goal and I have to apply stress to this individuals body to initiate adaptation so that I bring them closer to their goal. As a coach, I take pride in my detail when it comes to exercise selection, progressions and regressions. I take pride in building programmes that I know I have the answer to every single rep within that week. There is a WHY behind any of my clients performing a rep, set or exercise.
When I first joined the industry 5 years ago, specificity wasn’t something I even accounted for. In fact I didn’t even have a programme in front of me, I would just choose exercises that seemed convenient at the time for the sake of making my client ‘work hard’. This meant I had clients killing themselves within the gym yet not achieving the results they initially hired me for, which wasn’t great for business.
With all this being said, here are a few points that I would consider when choosing an exercise for someone to do:
1) Have previous injuries impacted this person performing this movement, can they do a different variation?
2) Does this exercise align with the goal they’re trying to achieve?
3) Does this exercise align with the other exercises within their programme?
4) Does the client enjoy this movement, is there a different variation that I can programme that will get the adaptation and make the client enjoy it more?
5) Does the reward out weigh the risk of this movement?
I hope after reading everything within this post, the big takeaway is that smart work always trumps hard work. I could programme completely different exercises, throw random sets, reps and times together and make you work hard. But this leaves you no closer to your initial goal…
The hard work within all of this actually comes to understanding what exercises will help you achieve your goal, but this is what coaches are for!
To finalise this all, linked below is my 10 week full body strength and mobility programme, every rep, set and exercise is there for a purpose and will bring you closer to being the strongest, most mobile version of yourself.