Strength is Specific: The key to optimal strength training for sports

Have you ever wanted to know how strength training transfers to sport? 

Do you want to be able to figure out which exercises and loading schemes to use, so you can improve performance in any sporting movement? 

In this short book, Chris Beardsley gives you a framework to help you achieve all of this. 

Whether you are a strength and conditioning coach working with athletes, a personal trainer helping the general population, or even an athlete yourself, this book will teach you how to write better strength training programs for any performance goal.

Divided into four main sections, the book assumes no previous knowledge, but will take your understanding of strength training to new heights.

In a series of short, easily understood chapters, the first section summarizes the foundations of strength training. Here, you will learn what “strength” actually is, and how we can increase it by producing adaptations in the body and brain. 

The second section explains why there is a principle of specificity, and why it is important. 

In the third section, you will discover how to analyze the movement patterns involved in athletic activities such as sprinting, changing direction, and jumping to create a list of the kinds of strength required in each. By applying the principle of specificity, we can then see which type of strength training is needed in each case. 

Finally, the fourth section addresses practical issues of programming strength training, including how long is needed to recover between workouts, how the general adaptation syndrome can be used as a model of strength training, and how periodization actually works.