Introduction
The world of fitness is vast and ever-evolving, with countless individuals striving to reach their ultimate goals. Whether it's breaking records in the realm of sports or sculpting a jaw-dropping physique, there is always a new challenge to tackle. As the demand for online fitness coaching grows, so does the need to understand the nuances of different training methodologies.
Let's take a deep dive into the differences and similarities between training for elite athletic performance and elite level physiques. We will also explore how periodization differs in both types of training and how they can be the same.
Athletic Performance vs. Elite Physiques - What's the Difference?
At first glance, it may seem like training for athletic performance and elite physiques is the same thing. After all, both involve physical exertion, discipline, and a focus on nutrition. However, the goals and methods used for each are distinctly different.
Elite athletic performance training primarily focuses on improving an individual's ability to excel in a specific sport or activity. This often involves enhancing aspects such as strength, speed, power, endurance, flexibility, and agility. The ultimate aim is to enable the athlete to perform at their peak during competition.
On the other hand, training for an elite level physique is centered around aesthetics, with the goal of achieving a visually impressive body. This usually entails developing a balanced and symmetrical musculature, low body fat levels, and an overall pleasing appearance. The emphasis is on how the body looks, rather than its performance in a competitive context.
The Similarities
While the goals of athletic performance and elite physique training may be different, there are several similarities in the approaches used to achieve them. These include:
Resistance Training: Both types of training involve the use of resistance exercises to build muscle and strength. This can include compound movements like squats, deadlifts, and bench presses, as well as isolation exercises targeting specific muscle groups.
Cardiovascular Training: Athletes and fitness models alike need to maintain a strong cardiovascular system to support their physical efforts. Cardio exercises like running, swimming, cycling, and high-intensity interval training (HIIT) are common in both types of training.
Nutrition: Proper nutrition is crucial for achieving the desired results in both athletic performance and physique training. This includes consuming an adequate amount of calories, proteins, fats, and carbohydrates to support muscle growth, repair, and overall health.
Rest and Recovery: Allowing the body to recover and heal from intense training sessions is essential for both athletic performance and physique development. This involves getting enough sleep, managing stress, and incorporating active recovery techniques such as foam rolling and stretching.
Periodization: dividing training into distinct time periods (macro phases), each of which focuses or emphasizes a different element of fitness.
The Differences
While there are similarities between training for athletic performance and elite physiques, there are also several key differences. Those include:
Training Goals and Focus
Body Composition
Volume and Intensity
Periodization Structure and Components
1) Training Goals and Focus
Athletic performance training prioritizes specific skills and attributes needed for a particular sport or activity. This means that exercises and programming will be tailored to enhance those aspects. Those aspects include:
Speed
Power
Strength
Hypertrophy
Agility
Mobility
Endurance
Power-Endurance
Stability
Sport Specific Skills
In contrast, elite physique training is more focused on achieving a balanced and aesthetic appearance, so the choice of exercises and programming may differ. The goals are pretty simple:
Gain lots of muscle
Get really shredded
As you can see, athletes and bodybuilder have different goals. This naturally leads to physically looking different as well.
Athletic goals focus more on performance whereas bodybuilding goals put the emphasis on obtaining a very difficult physique that might actually be quite unhealthy to be in but that's what the demand of that style of competition is.
2) Body Composition
For physique competitors, the goal is to get as lean as possible while retaining as much muscle as possible. If they've reached their desired look, they actually cannot perform optimally. Think about it, when you're low on energy because you're cutting so much before getting on stage or having a photoshoot, are you going to be at peak performance?
Let's contrast that with an athlete. Think about a sumo wrestler. Thought about how that athlete would look like? Good. Now think about a marathon runner. What about a basketball player? Don't those look like wildly different body types? Sumo wrestlers need to put on weight to better utilize their momentum to push their opponent off the circle or tackle them down. Basketball players are generally pretty tall because it gives them a competitive advantage when trying to put a ball into a net that is suspended 10 feet off the ground. Marathon runners are usually very light in weight because they are taking hundreds of thousands of steps on a weekly basis so they need to be light enough to handle that much work on their joints.
When you look at physique competitors, they generally look pretty similar, just in different weight classes. They might be a bit bigger or have different anthropometric ratios, but generally speaking, they look the same.
3) Training Volume and Intensity
Athletes require different volumes and intensities for exercise. Athletes will typically have to focus on fast twitch muscle fibers for power and explosiveness depending on the phase of the program. Their primary goals are to increase performance parameters like endurance, power, speed, agility etc. They utilize building strength to translate into being better at those parameters. The focus is primarily on making exercises more efficient to create better movement patterns.
Physique competitors focus more on mechanical tension that creates muscle and induces metabolic fatigue. This is why some body builders can build muscle without necessarily developing strength at high rates. They're focus is to make the exercises harder to induce muscle growth. This sometimes means that movements need to be inefficient to emphasize work done on certain muscle groups even if it means lifting less weight overall.
4) Periodized Structure and Components
When it comes to periodization, bodybuilders and physique competitors have two basic phases when they prep for competition.
Bulking Phase
Cutting Phase
Periodization for sports have a little more nuance. Here at CeruLean Fit, we have a process that works best for most of our athletes. It's not the be-all-end-all, and we definitely deploy other methods. However, what works best for beginners or young athletes we've been training is the following outline:
Anatomical Adaptation Phase
Stability Phase
Endurance Phase
Hypertrophy Phase
Strength Phase
Power Phase
Speed and Agility Phase
Sport Specific Phase
Conclusion
Although on the surface, exercise and training in general can look similar for everyone, it can be drastically different the more you specialize your goals. If your goal is to be generally healthy then periodizing your training is not as high a priority. However, if you've got a competitive edge that drives you to be the best that you can possibly be, then you should be training towards very specific goals, optimal body composition for those goals, adequate volume and intensity and proper periodization.
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