By Rob Braat
Contents
1. Summary
2. Introduction
3. What Actually Drives Adaptation?
4. The Role of the Gym
5. Specificity vs Transferability
6. Conditioning isn't 'Sport Specific' Either
7. Final Thoughts
8. About the Author
Summary
This blog breaks down the myth of sport-specific exercises and reveals what actually drives performance adaptation: real overload, not resemblance. If you're serious about helping athletes perform at their peak, it’s time to rethink what specificity really means — and where it belongs.
Introduction
Let’s talk about sport specificity.
As strength and conditioning coaches, we are responsible for thoroughly analyzing both the sport and the individual athlete to guide our training decisions. This process — our needs analysis — considers the specific demands of the sport, the athlete’s position (when relevant), training age, injury history, and where they are in their macrocycle: preparatory, competition, or transition.
All of these factors shape how we build a program. If we’ve done our job well, every aspect of the microcycle should have a clear place in the mesocycle, which in turn fits into the larger macrocycle. In this context, training becomes truly “specific” — not because it mimics the sport visually, but because it is tailored to the needs and goals of that individual in their performance environment. That, in my opinion, is real specificity.
I start here because I think we've lost sight of what specificity actually means. Too often, it's reduced to imitation—exercises that look like the sport but lack meaningful transfer. This is a misunderstanding of both physiology and purpose.
Depending on the athlete’s goals and training phase, our job is to either maintain or build capacity—strength, power, force output, and resilience. But in the pursuit of “transferability,” we sometimes drift toward movements that look specific while compromising what actually drives adaptation.
What Actually Drives Adaptation?
Adaptation is driven by overload — applying a stimulus that challenges the body beyond its current capacity. When we impose external loads that stress the muscular system to a sufficient degree, we disrupt homeostasis. This creates a cascade of physiological responses that ultimately result in structural and neural adaptations.
These adaptations happen when muscles are loaded at sufficient intensities, often at specific joint angles, muscle lengths, and speeds of contraction. This means we need to think in terms of force production, time under tension, and range-specific loading, not whether an exercise looks like the sport.
If we remove the overload component in favor of visual imitation — say, using light bands or unstable surfaces to replicate a game-specific position — we may look like we’re being sport-specific, but we’re not providing a stimulus strong enough to create real physiological change.
“Training becomes truly ‘specific’ — not because it mimics the sport visually, but because it is tailored to the needs and goals of that individual in their performance environment.”
The Role of the Gym
My argument is this; Sport-specific exercises, in the way many coaches define them today, don’t exist in the gym. And frankly don’t belong there. This is because overload and specificity are mutually exclusive. The more we try to replicate sport movements in the weight room, the more we introduce variables that limit our ability to apply true overload — which is the primary driver of adaptation.
The role of the gym is not to simulate the sport, but to develop movement qualities and performance capacities that support the sport. For example, if we want to improve an athlete’s rate of force development, we need to focus on power output, velocity loss thresholds, and isometric strength in high-output positions. These qualities require load, intent, and precision — not imitation.
As soon as we try to make an exercise look like the sport, we often compromise the very things that make it effective. Light loads, awkward set-ups, or unstable surfaces might feel relevant, but they rarely produce the forces needed to drive real, measurable change.
Specificity vs Transferability
To facilitate transfer, an exercise doesn’t need to replicate the skill or movement pattern of the sport — it needs to enhance the physical capacity that underpins that skill. Take, for example, a striker in football: being able to sprint fast in a straight line won’t make them a better finisher, but it increases their ability to express that skill under pressure, at speed, and in the context of a game. And that’s the point.
We build capacity in the weight room. We refine skill on the pitch. To suggest that general (and specific) physical development has no impact on performance transfer is in my opinion wrong. The real specificity — the kind that includes perception, reaction, fatigue, decision-making, and timing — lives on the field: with the ball, against an opponent, within a tactical framework.
Our job as S&C coaches is to support the underlying mechanisms and systems that allow athletes to perform at their highest level when it matters most.
“The real specificity — the kind that includes perception, reaction, fatigue, decision-making, and timing — lives on the field: with the ball, against an opponent, within a tactical framework.”
Conditioning Isn’t 'Sport-Specific' Either
The same confusion around sport-specificity applies to conditioning. Coaches often try to label certain energy system work as “specific” to a sport, but the truth is, the underlying physiological mechanisms are universal. There’s nothing inherently “soccer-specific” or “AFL-specific” about aerobic capacity, anaerobic power, or lactate buffering. These are biological systems — not skills.
When we talk about improving an athlete’s conditioning, we’re targeting things like aerobic efficiency, lactate clearance, ATP-PCr recovery, and anaerobic speed reserve. These are fundamental to all sports, and our job is to develop them according to the demands of the game and the deficiencies of the athlete.
For example, if a wing-back can’t sustain repeated high-speed efforts late in a match, we don’t need a soccer-specific drill — we need to improve their anaerobic capacity and top-end sprint reserve. Ideally, we might train this through the sport — not because soccer physiology is unique, but because we want to maximize time spent with the ball, teammates, and tactical execution.
In other words, we often choose sport-integrated conditioning for logistical reasons, not because the body responds differently across sports. The “specificity” comes from how we package the stimulus — not the stimulus itself.
Final Thoughts
As coaches, our job is to prepare athletes to perform — not just in theory, but under real-world conditions, at high speed, under fatigue, and with intent. That preparation starts with understanding what matters: building physical capacities that support the athlete’s ability to express their skill, consistently and under pressure.
“Strength coaches need to stop being yes-men to technical staff and start standing up for what truly drives performance.”
The weight room isn't where the sport is played — it's where we develop the qualities that allow athletes to train harder, recover faster, and perform better. The same goes for conditioning: it's not about making it sport-specific, but about making it relevant, targeted, and effective.
In the end, the question isn’t whether an exercise looks like the sport. It’s whether it serves the athlete — in this moment, in this phase, for their long-term development. That’s the kind of specificity that matters.
On a final note
Let’s kill the myth that strength training makes athletes slow — once and for all. Speed, agility, and explosiveness come from force, and force starts with strength. Strength work makes athletes faster, more resilient, and better prepared when done right. As strength coaches, we must stop being yes-men to technical staff — agreeing to what feels good or looks the part — and start standing firm on what drives performance and long-term development. Athletes don’t need more appeasement — they need accountability and intent.
About the Author
Rob Braat
Rob is the Founder of The Athlete Forge and Premium Movement & Performance (PMP). Rob holds a Bachelor of Science in Sports and Exercise Science from Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia, and is currently completing his Master’s degree in Strength and Conditioning at St. Mary’s University in London, Twickenham.
In addition to his academic background, Rob works within the Academy of a professional football club in the Eredivisie (Netherlands), where he helps develop and enhance the performance of athletes training at the highest level. With extensive experience in both coaching and performance science, Rob is dedicated to advancing the field and supporting athletes to reach their full potential.
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