Why Train Movements Your Sport Rarely Uses?

If you're a runner or sprinter, most of your sport happens in a straight line. Swimming is a little more complicated because there is more rotation involved, but the end result is still the same — you're trying to move efficiently in one direction.

So when a runner sees lateral lunges, Copenhagen exercises or rotational work in their strength program, it's fair to ask what any of that has to do with running.

The answer is that I'm not only interested in making an athlete stronger in the movements they already perform thousands of times. I'm also interested in whether they can control the forces around those movements, whether important muscle groups are being neglected, and whether they have enough strength outside the fairly narrow positions their sport puts them in most often.

Running is a good example. It looks like a forwards and backwards activity, and mostly it is, but every stride is also a single-leg action. When your foot hits the ground, the hip, pelvis and trunk all have to deal with forces coming from different directions. The pelvis can drop, the leg can move inwards and the trunk can rotate. You might not see a big sideways or rotational movement, but the body still has to control all of that while continuing to move forwards.

That's one reason I might use an anti-rotation exercise with a sprinter. I'm not trying to make them rotate more when they run. I'm asking them to produce force while controlling movement somewhere else. If they can do that better, there is a potential performance benefit because more of the force they produce can go into the movement we actually want.

The same applies to lateral work. A lateral lunge puts the hip and leg into a position that a runner or sprinter doesn't spend much time deliberately loading. Copenhagen variations can give the adductors a good strength stimulus. Single-leg work can challenge the athlete to produce force while controlling the pelvis and trunk. Depending on the athlete, lateral jumps, carries or rotational work might also have a place.

None of those exercises has to look like running to be useful to a runner. What matters is why the exercise is there and what we're trying to get from it.

This also gets into the idea of keeping muscles "in balance", which is a phrase I don't particularly like because it can mean almost anything. I'm not trying to make every muscle equally strong. Different sports place different demands on the body, and some muscles and actions should be stronger than others.

What I don't want is an athlete becoming very strong in the movements they repeat all the time while some of the muscles that help support and control those movements get very little training. A runner may get plenty of exposure to producing force forwards, but that doesn't mean every muscle around the hip is being challenged well in every role it has to perform. The adductors and abductors still matter. The trunk still has to control rotation. The pelvis still has to stay under control when you're on one leg.

Training in other directions can therefore help build a broader strength base around the movement the athlete performs most often. From a performance point of view, that's important because sport isn't just about producing force. It's also about controlling where that force goes.

There is an injury side to this as well.

I'm not suggesting that training in three planes suddenly makes someone injury-proof. Injuries are far more complicated than that. But if a sport repeatedly loads the same movements and muscle groups while giving relatively little exposure to others, it makes sense to consider whether some of those less-used areas need more strength and control.

Sport also doesn't always happen from perfect positions. You land slightly differently from one stride to the next, your foot hits the ground somewhere you didn't expect, or you move a little differently as you fatigue. A lateral lunge doesn't prevent a running injury, and an anti-rotation exercise doesn't prevent a hamstring strain, but developing strength and control in areas your sport doesn't train particularly well can give you more capacity to deal with those less-than-perfect positions.

For Masters athletes, I think this is worth considering because many have been doing their sport for a very long time. A 50-year-old runner may have accumulated decades of mostly forward movement. A swimmer may have completed an enormous number of similar stroke actions. A sprinter may have spent years developing very specific positions and movement patterns.

That's part of how you get good at a sport, but it can also mean some positions, muscles and movement directions get plenty of exposure while others get very little. Everyday life probably isn't making up the difference either. Most of us walk forwards, sit, drive and spend a fair amount of time at desks.

The gym gives us a chance to fill some of those gaps, but that doesn't mean adding exercises simply because they're different. If I put a lateral lunge into a runner's program, there needs to be a reason. If I add rotational work for a swimmer, there needs to be a reason. Training in another plane isn't enough justification by itself.

The sport still determines what we prioritise. A sprinter needs a program that develops the strength and power qualities required for sprinting. A swimmer's program should reflect what swimming asks of them. I wouldn't try to distribute training volume evenly across the sagittal, frontal and transverse planes. The balance between them should reflect the movement demands of the sport, the athlete's individual needs and the physical qualities we're trying to develop.

For me, that is really the answer to the original question.

Training in different planes can help performance by improving strength and control around the movement your sport relies on most. It can also help injury resilience by strengthening muscles, positions and directions that the sport itself may not challenge particularly well.

So if you're a runner and you see lateral lunges in your program, or you're a sprinter doing anti-rotation work, the question isn't whether the exercise looks like your sport.

The question is whether it develops something your sport needs but doesn't necessarily train very well on its own.

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