Specificity and New Year’s Goals
Last January, I talked about ideas related to setting goals and how to go about setting strong ones. So once you finish reading this about why goal setting is so important, make sure you go read that blog if you need some guidance on setting big, audacious goals for 2024!
When we don’t have goals, it is hard to know what to work on. This is true in fitness, rehab, business, self-improvement, and just life in general. It is hard to make true progress without a plan and it is hard to make a plan for an unknown destination. And that’s why we need to talk about the principle of specificity as the year begins.
If you aren’t familiar with the principle of specificity (in the health and fitness space), it basically means that we have to work specifically on an area to see significant results in this area. There have been some discussions how true this is or not, but by and large it is a pretty solid foundation for training of any kind. An example – if you want to get better at squatting, then you probably should go squat. Or if you want to be better at running, running a few days a week is probably going to help more than lifting weights or swimming. That doesn’t mean those other activities won’t contribute to improvements in your running ability in some way, but usually the best way to get better at something is to practice the activity itself.
Let’s take our squatting example and break it down a little. Say your goals this year is going to be to PR your front squat – that’s an awesome goal! How do you get there though? Doing mobility for the hips, ankles, and even upper body is important to make sure you can get to full depth and tolerate that position. Doing some breathing work in that position and through the pattern may help you maintain the tension your need to hit that big PR. But I’m sure you were thinking (and you’re right) that the number one thing you need to do is front squat. Back squats, lunges, knee extensions, etc will all help strengthen those quads, but nothing will help you add weight to your front squat like front squatting will.
That’s the beauty of specificity in my opinion. It takes your goal and gives you a relatively straightforward path to get there (with a few obvious stops on the way to work on other areas that will contribute). As for me, I’ll be looking to PR my bench press and get better at handstand challenges this year and now you know what that means for my training. Let me know what you’ll be looking to specifically train this year and if you have any big, audacious goals!
Happy New Year!
