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It is my belief that it is easy to make a better athlete, because athleticism defined is the combination of qualities (such as speed, strength, and agility) that characterises an athlete. So technically speaking, improve one of these qualities and you have improved athleticism. In terms of strength gains, this is relatively easily achieved especially in the novice or untrained.

Mel Siff in Supertraining stated, “All sporting movement is specific and goal-directed. Therefore, the strength displayed in the execution of each movement is also specific and goal directed.” So making better players is more complex as strength gains need to be context (position/sport) specific and many strength gains in the gym are non-specific and don’t transfer to on-field performance.

This differentiation between “athleticism” and “playerism” may help you consolidate or challenge existing practice, and guide programming and periodisation to optimise transference for context specific “player” development. Hopefully it might stimulate some interesting reflection or conversations around non-specific and specific strength training, which will also be the focus of some future posts.

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