This is something that you’ve never really read about before in any magazine. Although it’s a little scientific in a way… I think it’s really important for you to understand how your body reacts to different types of training. It’s important because it can help you get faster results… this is all using the Principal of Specificity.
You are going to learn about the three forms of specificity that can help drastically accelerate your results. The Principal of Specificity says that your body will as rapidly as possible to any stress you place on it. So let’s look at these three forms of specificity.
Mechanical Specificity
This form of specificity refers to the weight and movements that are placed on the body. For example, if your current goal in the weight room is to build a strong endurance in your legs… then you will want to use lighter weights and more 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 do the opposite of endurance training then you need to life heavier weight at lower reps. This will concentrate on building lean muscle mass… which is required to life heavier loads of resistance.
Specificity Number Two, Neuromuscular Specificity
Neuromuscular specificity talks about the speed at which your muscles are being trained. So if you wanted to build more power and quickness of the muscle contraction… you would need to lift a lighter weight and contract your muscles at a very fast pace.
If your goal is to create maximum stability… you will use heavy weights and slow down the contraction speed.
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.
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 speaking you will want to burn more calories and activate as many muscles as you can in your exercises. So if you were doing a shoulder press then you’d do this standing. That will activate tons of stabilizer muscles therefore burning more calories… again because you’re supporting yourself. If you were sitting down then you would be getting assistance with stability… and have a lesser calorie burn.
So remember that you need to use all the different specificity levels when you workout. Doing this will shoot your results way beyond that of everybody else you know and you’ll be the envy of all the women. Just think of that confidence boost!
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 personal training site. One of his fitness passions is creating fitness programs. So he also works with Taylor to build fitness training programs.
