General strength exercises are used in overall body conditioning. They are not directly related to the specific actions seen in your sport i.e., strengthening the muscles as they are used in MMA for example and increasing your functional potential for improved performance. Like greater punching power!
The crunch is a great exercise. It does strengthen your abdominal muscles. But it does very little to affect your punching power. it does not strengthen the muscles you need to make a powerful punch. And it does nothing to improve the movement pattern which requires the separation of the hips, shoulders to generate maximum punching force.
That’s the secret of our explosive power DVD. It teaches you to separate your hips from your shoulders while strengthening your obliques along with the other muscles you need for K0 punching power!
Specialized Strength Exercises
Specialized strength exercises are used to develop the physical or physiological qualities that apply directly to your sport. These exercises are designed and selected so that the movement and actions closely match those seen in your sport.
Specialized exercises that promote psychological traits consist of movements and actions that require decisiveness, willpower, perseverance and confidence to achieve specific goals. They have similar concentration and physiological qualities as seen during competition.
For example, execution of certain specialized exercises requires concentration to develop the neuromuscular pathway needed. A strength exercise which duplicates a particular portion of a skill requires ultimate concentration and perseverance to repeat exactly the same movement time after time to develop the necessary muscle feel. For the specialized exercises to have maximum positive transfer you must be decisive in your movements and actions in order to develop the confidence to repeat the action during competition.
Criteria For Specialized Strength Exercises
For an exercise to be specific it must fulfill one or more of the following criteria:
1. The exercise must duplicate the exact movement witnessed in certain actions of the sports skill. For example, an exercise to duplicate the exact ankle, knee, hip or shoulder joint action.
2. The exercise must involve the same type of muscular contraction as used in the skill execution. For example, in the push-off in sprinting, the muscles undergo an explosive shortening contraction (after being pre-tensed) to produce maximum force and resultant running speed. After the initial contraction the limb continues on its own momentum until the antagonist muscles undergo a strong lengthening (eccentric) contraction to slow down and stop the limb before an injury can occur. The special exercise can also duplicate the speed of movement.
3. The special exercise must have the same range of motion as in the skill action. For example, in running, doing an exercise with the arm raised above the head and then pulling it downward may use the same muscles but does not duplicate the same range of muscular arm action. More specific is to move the arm backward and upward so that it duplicates the exact range of motion which occurs in the running stride.
The concept of exercise specificity is new to sports but the term “specificity” is not. Many authors have used the term “specific exercises” but few exercises actually fulfilled the above criteria. The specificity referred to by these authors usually refers to strengthening or stretching the muscles that may be involved, but not the way they are used in the skill execution.
Typical strength and conditioning programs for athletes deal with general exercises to get you “in shape.” In some cases, the exercises that are prescribed use the same muscles as used in your sport, but if these exercises do not duplicate the same range of motion, the same type of muscle contraction, or the exact movement and coordination as seen in skill execution, they will not be functional i.e., they will not directly be used in your performance.
For example, researchers who have done electromyographic studies to determine the muscular involvement in running, found that the abdominals play a major role. To strengthen the abdominals the researchers recommended the crunch and the crunch with a twist. These exercises do strengthen the abdominals but only through a very small range of motion that is not specific to running.
When the abdominals come into play in running, it is mainly the abdominal oblique muscles which prevent the hips and shoulders from rotating too much. The obliques also play a major role in midsection flexibility and in maintaining a firm connection between the leg and arm action.
In the crunch (or sit up) exercise it is mainly the upper rectus abdominis that is strengthened. In running, only the lower rectus plays an important role, especially in sprinting. The crunch with a twist involves the obliques but the range of motion is extremely small and more importantly, the twisting occurs when the spine is flexed. This is a potentially dangerous situation since rotation of the trunk should always take place when the spine is maintained in its normal curvature. Thus even though the exercises strengthen the abdominals they are not specific to the actual muscle actions involved in running.
For maximum effectiveness the development of strength must be in synchronization with your skill execution. This is considered usable strength, i.e., the strength that you gain can be displayed in your execution. This is the greatest value that specialized exercises can give you that general exercises cannot.
The key to improving your performance is to do general exercises to develop a base and to then do special exercises that duplicate the movements and actions seen in the actual skills execution. In this way the development of the physical abilities that are specific to your sport will have the greatest impact on maintaining or improving your ability to perform better.
Because of the need for skill duplication most exercises are best done with rubber tubing as in the Active Cords set. The cords are especially important for the leg, hip and shoulder actions. The reason for this is that it is very difficult and in some cases impossible, to duplicate the exact movements of the legs, hips and shoulders with dumbbells, barbells or machines. Medicine ball exercises are also used for strength and explosive muscular development.
For more information on specialized strength and flexibility exercises, see Secrets of Russian Sports Fitness and Training, Build a Better Athlete, Explosive Golf, and Explosive Running-Second Edition.