Most coaches understand that training has to be specific to the goal. Fewer understand the paradox that governs how specificity actually works. Train a beginner with the exercises that look closest to their sport and they progress for a few weeks, then stall. Keep an advanced athlete on the same general preparatory work that built their base and their performance plateaus while their competitors move ahead. Getting the balance between general and specific strength wrong — or worse, not understanding that the balance shifts as the athlete develops — is one of the most common reasons athletic programs stop producing results.
This article is about transfer of training. Specifically, why general strength is the correct stimulus early in a training career, why specific strength takes over once a base has been built, and how to manage the transition without collapsing the work that came before it.
What Transfer of Training Actually Means
Transfer of training refers to the degree to which an improvement in one exercise produces an improvement in another. A back squat transfers to sprint performance. A weighted sled push transfers to sprint performance differently. A weighted golf swing transfers to a golf swing, but in a way that creates overuse patterns rather than improving the movement. Not all transfer is positive, and not all positive transfer is equal.
The Russian sports scientist Anatoliy Bondarchuk, the hammer throw coach who produced multiple Olympic champions and still holds the world record through his athletes, built one of the most systematic frameworks for understanding transfer. Bondarchuk classified every training exercise into one of four categories based on how closely the exercise resembles the competitive movement. General preparatory exercises do not repeat the competitive action or use the same muscle groups in the same way. Specialised preparatory exercises do not repeat the competitive action but use the same muscle groups in similar regimes. Specialised developmental exercises recreate the elements of the competitive movement. Competitive exercises are the sporting movement itself.
The classification matters because transfer is directional and it is context-dependent. A general preparatory exercise builds the capacity that a specialised preparatory exercise then expresses. A specialised preparatory exercise builds the capacity that a specialised developmental exercise then expresses. And so on up the chain to the sport itself. Miss a rung on that ladder and the athlete either plateaus or injures.
The Principle of Specificity and Why It Misleads People
The law of specificity states that the adaptations the body produces are specific to the demands imposed on it. This is true, and it is why training must eventually be matched to the outcome the athlete is chasing. It is also the single most misunderstood principle in coaching.
The trap coaches fall into is reading specificity as a command rather than a principle. A command would read: to improve a squat, squat. To improve a sprint, sprint with resistance. To improve a tennis serve, swing a weighted racquet. This interpretation produces athletes who get good at a narrow set of movements, develop overuse patterns in the tissues those movements stress, and lack the broader physical capacity to keep adapting once initial gains flatten out.
The principle itself is subtler. Training needs to be specific to the desired outcome, but any training outcome has a large number of preceding qualities that need to be developed before the specific end goal can be trained to its full extent. Training the external rotators of the shoulder is not specific to the bench press. But in the context of a training scheme building towards a bigger bench press, strengthening those external rotators is highly specific — because without them, the lifter will either plateau or injure their shoulder before reaching their potential. Specificity operates at the level of the program, not the individual exercise.
This is why general and specific strength are not opposed. They sit on a continuum, and the correct ratio shifts with the athlete’s development.
What General Strength Actually Builds
General Physical Preparedness is the phase of training that builds the broad base of strength, work capacity, structural integrity, and motor control that later specialisation depends on. The exercises used during this phase do not look like the competitive movement, and that is the point.
For a beginner, general strength is not a stepping stone to real training — it is the training. A novice who cannot squat their own bodyweight, cannot perform a clean pull-up, cannot hold a proper bracing pattern under load, and has no structural balance across agonists and antagonists does not need a specialised program. They need a general program. Compound movements performed with correct technique, in the rep ranges that develop strength and hypertrophy, produce rapid and generalised improvements across almost every performance metric you could test. The novice gets stronger at everything because everything is currently well below their structural ceiling.
There is also a biomechanical reason a beginner should not chase specific strength early. Specialised movements demand motor control, mobility, and sequencing that beginners have not yet developed. Asking a beginner to perform sport-specific plyometrics, Olympic lift variations, or heavy unilateral work before they have basic compound strength produces poor technique under load, which writes poor motor patterns into the nervous system. Those patterns are extremely difficult to correct later. The advanced lifter can handle complex movements because they have the neuromuscular development and the mobility to execute them correctly. The beginner does not, and trying to force the progression accelerates the development of imbalances rather than resolving them.
The core principle for beginners is build the capacities required for more complex exercises. Stick to simpler movements. Use the time to close mobility gaps and establish the motor patterns that more demanding work will eventually depend on.
When Specificity Starts to Matter: The Evidence Base
At some point, general strength stops transferring. For most athletes, this happens around the intermediate stage — once basic compound lifts are strong relative to bodyweight and structural balance has been largely addressed. Past that point, further improvements in general strength produce smaller and smaller returns on sporting performance.
The research on maximal strength and short sprint performance illustrates this point cleanly. Paul Comfort and colleagues at the University of Salford have published a series of studies examining how changes in squat strength translate into sprint performance, and the findings map precisely onto the general-to-specific continuum.
Comfort and colleagues compared professional rugby league players to recreationally trained individuals across five, ten, and twenty metre sprint performance. Relative back squat strength correlated with sprint performance, particularly over the shorter distances where acceleration dominates and the stretch-shortening cycle contributes less. In a follow-up study, Comfort, Haigh, and Matthews tracked nineteen professional rugby league players through an eight-week preseason that combined four weeks of strength-focused training with four weeks of power-focused training. Both absolute and relative squat strength increased, and the changes in strength were reflected in improvements in short sprint performance. A similar pattern appeared in the Styles, Matthews, and Comfort (2016) investigation of professional soccer players, where a simple in-season strength program increased both maximal squat strength and short sprint times.
The pattern across these studies is consistent. Getting stronger transfers to faster acceleration over five to twenty metres, and the effect is strongest in athletes who are not yet strong. Once an athlete reaches a relative strength threshold — typically around twice bodyweight in the back squat for the lower body — the correlation between further strength gains and sprint performance diminishes. The athlete has accumulated enough general strength to express the force the short sprint demands. From that point onward, improvements in sprint performance come from more specific work — from training the rate of force development, the ability to apply force horizontally, and the specific motor patterns of sprinting itself.
This is the practical expression of transfer. General strength transfers to specific performance up to a threshold. Past that threshold, the athlete needs specialised preparatory work — the exercises that use similar muscle groups in similar regimes but do not repeat the competitive action — and then specialised developmental work, and eventually the competitive movement itself, rehearsed under progressively sport-specific conditions.
The Transfer Chain in Practice
The way this plays out inside a training program is through a chain of exercises that progressively narrow from general to specific. The compound lifts build the engine. Accessory work addresses the weaknesses that limit the compound lifts. Specialised preparatory work takes the capacity built in the compound lifts and channels it into patterns that resemble the sport. Specialised developmental work bridges into the movement itself. The competitive movement closes the loop.
A coach writing programs for a field sport athlete might construct the chain as follows. The back squat and trap bar deadlift build the base of lower body force production — these are general preparatory from Bondarchuk’s framework. Split squats, Bulgarian split squats, and unilateral posterior chain work begin to bias the athlete towards single-leg force expression, which is what sprinting actually requires — specialised preparatory. Loaded jumps, bounds, and resisted sprints bring the work closer to the sporting movement without replacing it — specialised developmental. Unresisted sprints and sport-specific drills sit at the top of the chain. The strength work does not replace the sport work, and the sport work does not replace the strength work. Each feeds the one above it.
The same logic applies to any sporting application. The golfer does not do weighted golf swings. The golfer builds rotational strength through medicine ball work, anti-rotation through cable work, and lower body drive through compound lifts — and then the golfer practises golf. The boxer does not train with weighted gloves. The boxer builds bench press and overhead press strength, trains shoulder external rotation and scapular control to protect the structures, develops rotational power, and then the boxer boxes. Directly training sport movements under load creates overuse injuries and motor pattern interference. The strength work exists to improve the underlying physical qualities — strength, power, rate of force development — that the sport then expresses.
A Macrocycle That Shifts the General-to-Specific Ratio
The periodisation structure that reflects this progression uses general preparatory work early and progressively introduces more specific work as the macrocycle develops. The ratio is the variable.
A beginner’s twelve-week macrocycle might progress through four three-week mesocycles on the main compound lifts as follows. Mesocycle 1: 3 x 12. Mesocycle 2: 3 x 10. Mesocycle 3: 4 x 8. Mesocycle 4: 5 x 5.
The exercise selection stays general across the full twelve weeks — compound lifts, structural balance work, basic unilateral patterns. The variation is in volume and intensity, not in specificity. The beginner does not need specialisation because their returns on general work are still high.
An athletic off-season macrocycle for a developed athlete looks structurally similar in its progression but includes a shift in exercise selection as the cycle develops. On the main compound lifts: Mesocycle 1: 4 x 10,10,8,8. Mesocycle 2: 5 x 8,8,4,4,4. Mesocycle 3: 6 x 5,5,3,3,2,2. Mesocycle 4: 6 x 3,2,1,3,2,1.
The early mesocycles carry more general preparatory work — volume across the major compound lifts to rebuild capacity after the competitive season. As the macrocycle progresses, the volume shifts toward specialised preparatory and specialised developmental work. By the final mesocycle, more of the session is spent on movements that resemble the sporting demand, and less is spent on pure general preparation. The general work is not removed — it is reduced in proportion. The athlete still needs a maintenance stimulus on the compound lifts to preserve the base. But the emphasis has shifted.
The most common mistake coaches make at this stage is removing general work entirely once specific work is introduced. This works for a short block, then performance declines because the general base that the specific work depended on has been left unmaintained. Specific work is potent because general work has built the capacity that specific work expresses. Strip the base and the specific work has nothing to express.
How to Know Where an Athlete Sits on the Continuum
There is no universal cut-off. The threshold at which an athlete should shift emphasis from general to specific strength depends on their training age, their sporting demands, and their existing physical profile. A few diagnostic questions will place most athletes.
Relative strength benchmarks. An athlete who cannot squat one and a half times bodyweight is not yet at the point where specific strength pays back. Further general strength gains will still produce sporting improvements. An athlete above two times bodyweight on the squat will get diminishing returns from chasing a bigger squat, and their time is better spent on more specific work.
Structural balance. An athlete with significant bilateral asymmetries, ratios between antagonists that fall outside normal ranges, or mobility restrictions that limit their position under load should be pulled back into general preparation regardless of their overall strength level. Specialisation on top of structural deficits accelerates breakdown.
Sport-specific output. If the athlete’s sporting performance is still improving in response to general strength increases, general work is still the correct stimulus. If sporting performance has plateaued while the strength numbers keep climbing, general strength is no longer the rate-limiter and the emphasis needs to shift.
Training age. A true beginner — less than two years of consistent, structured training — should be running general preparatory work almost exclusively. A training age of two to five years typically calls for a mix, weighted toward general in the early years. Beyond five years of consistent training, specialisation becomes the primary driver of further progress, with general work maintained as the foundation rather than the focus.
Where This Fits in a Coaching Framework
Transfer of training is not an isolated concept. It governs exercise selection, periodisation, and the sequencing of training phases across an athlete’s career. It is the reason exercise selection is a diagnostic exercise, not a creative one. It is the reason the exercise selection framework has to be built on assessment. It is the reason periodisation is not just a way of varying volume but a way of progressively shifting the emphasis from general to specific across the training year.
Getting this right requires a system. Most coaches arrive at some version of the general-to-specific principle through experience — they notice that beginners respond to anything and that advanced athletes need precision. Few build a systematic framework that tells them, for this athlete with this history and this goal, exactly where on the continuum the work should sit and what the transition plan looks like.
The Program Design Mentorship covers the twenty-seven programming variables that govern this process — from exercise selection through to loading, tempo, rest, periodisation, and the progression logic that moves an athlete from general preparation into specialised work without losing what came before. It is an eight-week, one-on-one mentorship built for practising coaches who are tired of guessing and want to write programs with precision. See the full coaching education options for the range of available mentorships and courses.
