Strength and Conditioning for Team Sports

Specificity of training is increasingly acknowledged as fundamental in shaping training responses (Baechle et al., 2000; Kraemer et al., 2002). Training specificity encapsulates two key concepts. The first is that the nature of a training response is dependent – hence specific to – the nature of the particular training stimulus. The second, a corollary of the first, is that the degree to which training resembles – i.e. is specific to – conditions faced during competition influences the transfer of training to performance. These two concepts arise repeatedly in all aspects of physical preparation. The essence of training specificity is that training responses elicited by a given exercise mode are directly related to the physiological elements involved in coping with the specific exercise stress (Kraemer et al., 2002). Accordingly, there is very little impact upon muscles and metabolic pathways that are not directly employed during the particular exercise (Millet et al., 2002a)