The Principal of Specificity. You’re probably thinking… wow this sounds like a fun article. Well this really is something that will benefit you to know. The principal will talk about the different ways your body reacts to different types of training. And this can help you get more results faster.
The Principal of Specificity simply states that the body will adapt to the stresses put on it. Because of this, you can get the results that you want when weight and strength training… you just have to understand these 3 forms of specificity.
Mechanical Specificity
When it comes to mechanical specificity, it’s all about the movements of the body and the amount of weight placed on the body. For example… if your goal is to build muscle endurance then you’re going to want to use lighter weights and increase the amount of reps.
This will help to fatigue your leg muscles and make them stronger at working for long periods of time. Remember that you get what you train for.
If you wanted to build more lean muscle mass instead then you’ll want to lift heavier weights at a lower rep count. This causes your muscles to adapt to heavier resistance levels which means you’ll need more strength. So that’s exactly what it will do for you.
Neuromuscular Specificity
Different from Mechanical Specificity, Neuromuscular Specificity is all about the speed at which your muscles can contract. So if you wanted to work on speed that contraction up then you’d need to life a lighter weight but drastically speed your contraction up without losing control.
So if you were to slow your reps down… and I mean really slow them down, then you would create a strong stable foundation.
So to quickly go over that again… in the second example because you are training with slower contractions you are enabling your muscles to become stronger and stabler. However, when you work on speeding up those contractions, you are again really building power and teaching that muscle how to move quick. And you need to learn to do both.
Next Specificity is Metabolic Specificity
This is very similar to mechanical specificity in that their relationship is the same. However metabolic specificity refers to the energy demand that is placed on your body. For example… if you were to work your muscles for a longer period of time then you’d be burning more energy.
The body adapts to this energy output by learning to conserve and get stronger… and building endurance. Also to keep the energy expenditure high you will have to force yourself to keep the rest periods very short. So naturally when you’re putting on lean muscle mass, you’ll have longer resting periods and much shorter energy bursts… and not as much.
Let’s go over one more real life example. Assuming your initial goal is to get rid of as much body fat as you can before you go into a muscle building phase… you concentrate more on increased energy and burning calories than muscle building.
So mechanically to burn more calories you want to use muscle building weight and your movements would be more effective in a standing position. This is so because you are engaging more muscles standing up through stabilizing your body. If you were sitting down then the seat helps stabilize you and you cant burn as many calories.
I hope that made one thing really clear to you. You have to understand that you can’t do the same thing over and over again. If you want results that really make your friends and family jealous about your body… you need to change it up and use the different specificity levels.
Dan Boyle is a NASM certified trainer who works with Taylor Ryan. He is a trainer on staff at The Art of Weight Lifting… a womens training site. One of his fitness passions is creating fitness programs. So he also works with Taylor to build fitness programs.
