Now here’s an absolutely scintillating discussion topic. If we consider the difference between generalists, or all-around athletes and single-sport specialists, there are several distinguishing characteristics we can identify.
I’m thinking about this in the context of our community. Lifetime Athletes who are going through the journey with a perspective. Behaviors which define their intentions.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, by David Epstein. My observations in sports and fitness over the past 45 years have been consistent with the tone of that work.
I often talk about the bell-shaped curve of biology, or of any normal distribution describing a population or parameter we emphasize in sports, fitness, or longevity. There is usually a reference to the broad middle. Most of the time we suggest this captures everyone within about two standard deviations from the mean on either side. This isn’t written in stone, but it is a graphic representation of reasonable generalizations.
And accordingly, we recognize and respect outliers in this distribution. There is also a great book by Malcom Gladwell with the title, Outliers. Definitely worth a read if you have not done so yet. As I consider the athletes in our vast community, I see two groups who fall outside of our umbrella.
- Those who are sedentary, unhealthy, and uninterested in seeing themselves as an athlete and joining us in the collaborative quest for optimized wellness and performance.
- Elite, serious, and highly competitive athletes (at any age) whose identity is substantially invested in absolute peak performance, potentially with a relative amount of disregard for long term health.
We’re not talking about those 2 groups. We wish them well and they are always welcome here in our inclusive community but their approach does not fit our model. It’s not possible to be all things to everyone. I gave that up in clinical practice decades ago. Never works and always ends in frustration. The outlier populations want to hear only what they want to hear so strongly that you have little chance of reasoning with them.
Statistics would suggest that the first of the two previously mentioned groups, the sedentary ones, might actually make up the majority of our nationwide population. That’s true on one level and I’m not disagreeing with that point. However, I’m suggesting that there is actually only a small percentage of that group that is so closed-minded that they are incapable of changing. A mindset so filled with delusion and denial that they are “lost causes.”
Back to the 95% or so of people who are, or can be…Lifetime Athletes. We can place them in one of two categories. Generalists or specialists. Neither classification is permanent or confining. One can switch back and forth as much as desired. But let’s take a look at what makes these groups unique.
ATHLETIC GENERALISTS
- Wish to possess all-around fitness and athleticism. This equates to having a balance (although individualized) between strength, speed, power, agility, and endurance.
- Like to be pretty good or “decent” at most things. They train to support a blend of capacities and skills.
- Enjoy being able to jump into almost any sport or activity and not only perform reasonably well, but not get hurt in the process. They consider this a freedom and value having many athletic options.
- Prefer a relatively high amount of variety in training and sports participation. They find this practice stimulating and it prevents boredom and monotony.
- Maintain a general amount of readiness year-round. While they still practice seasonality, generalists don’t usually require a long post-season with significant downtime for recovery from exhaustive competition.
- Are not interested in enduring high levels of joint and muscle soreness. Feeling great most of the time trumps high fatigue and all-cost investment into workload.
- Find their athleticism to drive overall health and life enjoyment. They are healthier because they are athletic, and they emphasize a health-first mentality.
- Are ideal candidates for the Training Tribe. They like the idea of a scientific, comprehensive system, housed within The Lifetime Athlete App that puts everything at their fingertips and takes the guesswork out of longevity-based training.
ATHLETIC SPECIALISTS
- Desire to express maximum potential, or performance, in one sport, or capacity. They are willing to sacrifice ability in other areas in order to maximize it in their prioritized passion pursuit (P3…seems like a term we might want to use more).
- Tend to train with an exclusive focus on their primary sport. In other words, if they believe any form of training to be superfluous, unrelated to their sport, and not likely to make them better at said sport…they are unlikely to engage in such behavior.
- Are usually willing to accept a slightly greater risk of overuse injury as part of the territory when you’re putting almost all your eggs into one sport basket. They derive so much joy and satisfaction from their sport, it’s totally worth the risk.
- Do not require much variety in their training applications because they thrive best in their area of specialization. They absolutely love their sport and they want to do as much of it as possible. They don’t usually get bored.
- Like to point for peak performances, and hit seasons or events that enable personal best outputs. Therefore they are quite willing to embrace longer recovery periods and off seasons because they find their peak seasons so rewarding.
- Are willing to put up with a little more soreness and fatigue than generalists when doing so allows for the greatest sport-specific adaptations. However, they are very keen to effectively manage workload, inflammation, and recovery.
- Have concern about staying healthy for many reasons but particularly to support athletic performance.
- Make the most appropriate one-on-one coaching clients. They benefit greatly from highly personalized programming and supportive, interactive coach-athlete relationships.
As you can see from those descriptions…both groups are awesome humans. And at different times in our lives, we’ve all probably been in one cohort or another. I equally enjoy working with both generalists and specialists. I find it particularly gratifying in discussing where each trainee is currently “at” and what type of programming provides the best fit.
I’d also say that specialists are not necessarily more motivated than generalists. They’re just focused on a very specific aspect of human performance. The generalists are just as focused but it’s on a wider field of view, to use an optics analogy. Likewise, generalists are not wiser than specialists because of their global perspective. Everybody can get what they want. In fact, many of our TLA community spend half (or so) the year being a generalist and the other half a specialist. That model works great in most cases.
Training generalists is unique in its own right. We have to do a thoughtful juggling or balancing act to keep all 5 Capacities of Human Performance alive and well rather simultaneously. In reality, we adjust the relative ratios and emphasis between strength, speed, power, agility, and endurance throughout the year. In this way, they can hone or tune one or two capacities while the others are in maintenance mode. This takes some scientific wizardry and coaching wisdom. Done well, generalist training allows the athlete to have enough athletic familiarity in their system to call up a skill or condition and employ it without risk of injury. On a poor-fair-good-excellent scale, this allows for relatively “good” performance across a broad spectrum of athletic demands.
Training specialists, on the other hand, looks anywhere from slightly to wildly different. In these cases, we are constantly assessing conditioning and leveraging it to extract peak performance. We play with fire (inflammation) and thus cannot be casual about recovery. We lean heavily on genetic gifts (strengths) and hone them to near perfection. We shore up deficient areas (weaknesses) where it’s indicated. However, most of the year, we concentrate on sport-specific training and do just enough balanced intervention to keep the athlete functional in general terms. We tend to live on the edge of “how much sports-specific training can we get away with and concomitantly what’s the bare minimum of supplemental exercise we must apply.” On that same poor-fair-good-excellent scale, we are chasing (and usually attaining) excellence in the targeted sport.
Here are a couple of great questions to ask yourself. “Right now, are you more of a generalist or a specialist?” “Will this classification change in 6-12 months?” “Does your current programming reflect the vision you have of yourself and your primary goal(s)?”
As I said before, in absolute terms, there’s no right or wrong answer to those questions. There’s just what’s best for YOU…in the moment and beyond. Adjusting training in contextual manners is one of the secrets to success for The Lifetime Athlete.