Order of Operations: Specific or General Training?
A question I often get from people in the fitness world is: “What should I work on?” The options are overwhelming, and there’s not enough time to do everything. Everything feels like a weak link, and it can be hard to know where to start. The good news is, the answer is simpler than you might think. I like to break it down into three stages:
1) Get really specific
2) Get really general
3) Get specific again
Let’s walk through how this can unfold with some examples.
Stage 1: Get Really Specific
When you’re just starting out with training or using training to deal with a specific problem, the first thing you likely need to do is get incredibly specific about what needs attention. This is the stage where you zoom in on the precise issues that are holding you back, whether that’s a nagging injury, mobility issue, or weakness.
Take, for example, a client who walks into my studio with a fairly specific problem: a knee that just won’t behave. Everything else feels good, but this knee is the one thing that’s constantly nagging them. They’re not playing sports, just looking to relieve the discomfort in their daily life. In this case, while working on shoulders might sound reasonable, it’s not the priority. What’s important is identifying what range of motion in the knee is causing pain, understanding how it got to this point, and determining what actions will help resolve it.
This could involve sled work, split squats and hamstring work.
Each person’s situation is different, so the specific exercises will vary. The goal is to tailor the training to address the specific issue at hand, making progress in a targeted way.
Another person might need more mobility work and foot strength.
Another person might need hip flexor specific work and ankle mobility.
And an infinite combination of permutations that could unfold for 10,000 people from there.
Another way to frame it would be an athlete that is dealing with a sore left big toe. They bench press a ton, squat well, and feel strong overall. But when it comes to swinging a baseball bat, the way the toe interacts with the ground makes it agonizing. Here, the focus is again on being specific—targeting footwork and mobility drills that directly address the issue with the toe. Everything else can wait until that specific problem is resolved.
The key takeaway here is: **be as specific as you need to resolve the issue at hand**. This allows ACCESS to the next step.
Stage 2: Get Really General
Once your specific issue is under control, the next stage is all about building a solid foundation. Now, you can shift your focus to more general training that helps build overall strength, mobility, and endurance, setting you up for long-term success.
Let’s say you’re a person who’s a little out of shape but doesn’t have any major injuries—no knee pain, back pain, or shoulder issues. Maybe you’re just looking to get back into things and improve your general fitness. In this case, the goal isn’t to address any specific injury but to build a solid foundation. This means getting really good at the basics, like:
– Push-pull movements (e.g., ring rows, push-ups).
– Hip extension and flexion (e.g., back extensions, hamstring curls).
– Knee flexion and extension (e.g., step-downs, squats).
These movements are not about solving a particular problem; they’re about upgrading the hardware of your system. If you’re starting at a 4/10, the goal is to get to an 8/10 in terms of movement quality and strength. This is about laying the groundwork so that you’re not just surviving your day-to-day life, but thriving in it.
Now, let’s take that same baseball player who’s dealing with a similar big toe issue as before. The approach here is the same. Fix the specific issue first (the big toe), and then focus on improving the general foundational elements of strength and mobility—just like the general fitness person, but at a level that’s suited to their sport. They will simply be calibrated in their movement demands to what their capacity is. They might be producing 2x as much force as the gen-pop person, but the movement patterns are the same
For most people, this is the stage that will take up the majority of their training life. **You don’t need to get fancy.** Focusing on the basics can give you long-term progress and prevent injuries, which is often more than enough to keep you ahead of your peers who are skipping over the foundational work.
Stage 3: Get Really Specific Again (But Only If You Need To)
The third and final stage is reserved for when you need to get specific again, but this time, the focus is on high-level goals—often for athletes or those with very specific life circumstances.
Take the baseball player with dreams of making it to the MLB. They’ve got one year left in college to catch the attention of scouts. Their foundation is already rock solid, so now it’s time to focus on more specific goals. In this case, that could mean rotational drills to improve their throw speed or swing speed. It could also involve leg speed drills to enhance running and fielding performance. But here’s the catch: Unless you’re already an elite-level athlete in the foundations, **you probably don’t need to get that specific**.
Getting ridiculously good at the general basics will take you farther than you think. Most of your peers will be injured, burnt out, or struggling with weak foundations—if you focus on building your body’s resilience through general training, you’ll be ahead of them in the long run.
For the average gen-pop person, the same principle applies. If you work at a desk all day, for example, you might not be training for a sports career, but you are trying to stay injury-free while enjoying your hobbies. In this case, you’d still focus on general foundations, but you’d also pay a bit of extra attention to specific areas that are more prone to injury based on your lifestyle. If you’re a desk worker training for a marathon, for example, you might need to spend more time working on your feet, ankles, knees, and hips than someone who isn’t concerned with distance running.
The goal here is to minimize the risk of injury and keep your body functioning well for whatever activities you enjoy—whether it’s running, hiking, playing sports, or just living a pain-free life.
In Summary
When starting a new training program, the order of operations should look something like this:
1. **Get really specific**: Address the immediate problems that are limiting your ability to move, perform, or just feel good.
2. **Get really general**: Once the urgent issues are resolved, build a strong foundation with basic exercises that work on all areas of fitness—strength, mobility, endurance.
3. **Get specific again**: This step should be reserved for people with elite-level goals—like athletes who need to refine their performance—or individuals with very specific life challenges. For most people, this isn’t necessary and could even be counterproductive.
By following this progression, you’ll not only tackle the problems you’re currently facing, but also build a resilient and capable body for the long term. Whether you’re doing bulletproofing exercises, knees-over-toes training, ATG methods or just about any training of any kind, these principles can apply to anyone looking to get stronger and stay injury-free.