Build the Base Before You Specialize

A big equipment company ran an online challenge: max reps, one hand kettlebell snatch, ten minutes, one hand switch. If that sounds familiar, you already lift kettlebell sport, because that is exactly what a snatch event is. There was real money on the line, so a lot of people threw their names in. A lot of them came from a crossfit background, and a lot of them talked a big game beforehand. They were sure a generalist was going to walk in and take the prize.

It was a clean sweep for the kettlebell sport athletes. Not close. You had to scroll well past the top ten before a crossfit name showed up. The people who had spent years doing nothing but that one movement put up numbers that left everyone else blinking.

Here is the thing: that outcome was the most predictable result in the world. And the principle that made it predictable is the single most useful idea I can give you about how to train.

Specific demands require specific training

There is a principle in strength and conditioning called SAID, which stands for Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands. Strip away the jargon and it says this: your body adapts to exactly what you ask of it. Ask it to snatch a bell for ten minutes straight, week after week for years, and it gets extraordinarily good at snatching a bell for ten minutes. Ask it to do a hundred different things, and it gets pretty good at a hundred things and great at none of them.

That is not a knock on the generalist. The whole point of crossfit is to build an athlete who can handle any physical demand and handle it well, and they pull that off. Throw most high level crossfitters at almost any task and they will do fine. They did fine in this challenge too. But fine is not what wins when the challenge is somebody else's specialty. Expecting to beat a world record holder at the one lift they have built their life around is hubris. It is the NFL fan who thinks their fastest wide receiver could win the hundred meter dash at the Olympics. The guy is genuinely world class fast. He is also not a sprinter, and there is a reason he is not.

The more specific the goal, the more specific the training has to be. That is the whole rule.

Most of what you build generalizes

Now here is the part people miss, and it is the part that actually helps you.

A lot of fitness generalizes. Strength tends to carry across implements; a strongman who has not touched a bench in five years will still out press almost anyone you put next to him, because he has stayed strong everywhere else. Cardio carries across activities; a well conditioned soccer player can step onto a football field and not gas out, even if the skills are foreign. Flexibility and mobility carry too, which is why someone who does yoga moves well in things that have nothing to do with yoga.

All of that is true, with one caveat: to a degree. Take the world's strongest man and drop him into a powerlifting meet. He will post a big total, but he might not win, because powerlifting is three specific lifts and his sport is a dozen scattered ones. The more specific the demand, the less your general base will carry you the rest of the way.

So you get both truths at once. General training builds a wide foundation that transfers almost everywhere. Specific training builds a tall, narrow peak that wins on the day it matters. You need both, and the order you build them in is what most people get wrong.

Build the base, then build the peak

Think of general fitness as the foundation and specific fitness as what you build on top of it.

You can go top down and start specific. Train nothing but kettlebell sport and you will absolutely get stronger, fitter, and more mobile on the bell. But ask that same person to go for a run and they might pull a hamstring, because everything they trained happened standing still in one plane of motion. The base was never poured wide enough.

Bottom up is the better way. Build generalized strength, generalized cardio, generalized flexibility and mobility first, then funnel into your specific sport. You will progress faster, and you will get hurt less. Even once you are deep into your sport, keep some general work in the mix. Over index on specificity and you invite pattern overload and the injuries that come with it.

This shows up in how a single session is built. Start general and move specific. A general warm up, joint mobility, a dynamic warm up. Then a sport specific warm up and your specific work sets when you are fresh and warm, because that is the goal and it deserves your best energy. Then back out to general work: conditioning, strength, the squats and deadlifts and band work. Mobility at the end as part of the cooldown. General, specific, general.

Let the calendar set the dial

The same shape plays out across a season, and this is the most practical piece to steal.

Far out from a competition or a goal, lean general. That is the time for varied stimulus, conditioning, building a deep tank you can draw from later. As you get closer, dial the specificity up. Spend more of your training budget on the exact movements and energy systems you will need on game day, so all that general preparedness translates into a sharp, specific edge. Then when the goal is behind you, swing the dial all the way back to general. Take real time off the competition lifts. There is a reason every pro athlete gets an offseason where they stop playing their sport; those energy systems and tissues need the demand placed somewhere else for a while so they can recover and rebuild.

So how specific does your training need to be? It depends, and it depends on exactly two things: how specific your goal is, and how high you want to perform. If you just want to be fit and feel good, stay general and vary your stimulus; you do not need to specialize in anything. If you want to perform at a particular activity, get specific, and time that specificity to your calendar.

This is general principle, not a prescription for your body in particular. If you carry an injury history or you are building toward something that matters, get eyes on your plan from a professional who can see you move.

The fastest way to where you want to go is not training harder. It is doing the right things in the right order: base first, peak second, and the dial set to match how close the goal is.

Listen to the full episode here.

If this is the part you keep getting wrong, the order more than the effort, that is exactly what good coaching fixes. Reach out and let's build you a plan that fits your goal and your calendar. I've never turned anyone away over money, so don't let that stop you; come talk to me at /apply.

Vokse eller dø. — Coach Jordan