One size never fits all

Good piece at the Hybrid Perspective:

If we give 20 girls the same assignment for strength, we are assuming that they are all at the same level of strength/capability/technical level, etc. The reality of the situation is that that this is rarely the case across all your strength and conditioning exercises. You create a situation where the more developed or stronger athlete’s won’t get any benefit, and at the same time we may be promoting compensation/lack of benefit for under developed athletes. I feel we need to use regressions or progressions in order to get people in their “Goldilocks” window for strength and conditioning.  If we are just blanketing an general strength program of 3 sets of 10 handstand push ups or 40 leg lifts on a huge group with differences between them, I think it’s a recipe for disaster both in terms of safety and missing out on athletic performance development.

~~~

I’m not sure why so many gymnastics programs still demand uniformity with their strength where everyone does the same exercise despite the large gaps in ability. The one argument I can see for this uniform type is to monitor the gymnasts and keep an eye on quality.

Read the whole article.

Geddert on form and execution/quality over quantity: