The Importance of Training Specificity

It’s easy to get sucked into all the different training styles out there. High reps, low reps, isolation exercises, compound exercises and countless other variables.

Should you do them all? I recommend not.

The amount of specificity you train with for your goal makes a big difference. 20 rep sets won’t provide nearly as much strength specific benefits as 1-5 rep heavy sets will. If you split too much of your training between different styles, you won’t ever be optimizing for a specific goal.

You don’t see bodybuilders running marathons. Marathons work your cardiovascular system, they do hardly anything for muscle development when compared to moderate-intensity resistance training. Therefore, you see bodybuilders doing the vast majority of their training with hypertrophy specific work.

Is this to say you shouldn’t ever do training styles that may be tailored more towards another goal? Absolutely not. There are plenty of applications of different training styles to supplement your primary goal. 12 rep sets aren’t ideal for strength gain, but they can be great for muscle growth. So maybe you do your primary work as strength focussed programming, but you supplement that with some hypertrophy work.

Why? More muscle = a greater potential to generate force/become stronger.

So while the foundation and majority of your training should be specific to your goal, there are many cases when training that isn’t fully specific to your primary goal has many benefits, and can even be optimal to include, when in the appropriate circumstance.

Bottom Line:

Not training specific enough to your goal leaves a lot of potential results left on the table. There are ways that are best to train for a
specific goal as they best attack the mechanisms for which that capability is developed. The majority of your training should be done specific to your goal to get the best results for that goal. However, different training styles have many optimal applications, even for your primary goal, when implemented correctly.

If you have any questions at all or comments on this topic, please do leave them in the comment section below and I will be sure to respond!



Sport Specific Training

Fundamentals of Weight Training

Gaining Strength How To

Muscle Gain How To


Until Next Time,

Kohl Johnson




Support is much appreciated if you benefited from this:

Kohl Johnson

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