If you’ve been hitting the gym for a while but feel like your progress has stalled, you might be missing one of the most fundamental principles of training: The Principle of Specificity.

In a recent lecture from RP University, Dr. Mike Israetel breaks down why specificity is critical and how you can use it to stop wasting time and start seeing real gains.

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What is Specificity?

At its core, specificity means that if you want to get better at a certain ability, your training must reflect that goal. Dr. Mike defines it in two ways [01:14]:

1. Direct Training: Doing the actual movement (e.g., bench pressing to improve your bench press).
2. Subsystem Training: Training the muscles that support that movement (e.g., training your chest, shoulders, and triceps to improve your bench).

If your training doesn’t check one of these two boxes, it isn’t specific to your goal.

The Power of Directed Adaptation

One of the biggest mistakes lifters make in the gym is “exercise hopping”—changing workouts every week because they’re bored. Dr. Mike warns against this through the sub-principle of Directed Adaptation [01:52].

Think of it like learning a language. If you study German for four weeks straight, you’ll make massive progress. But if you do a day of German, a day of French, and a day of Spanish, your brain gets confused [03:30].

Your muscles work the same way. To see real growth, you need to provide a consistent stimulus. This means:

• Pick 2-3 core exercises for a muscle group (like high bar squads and leg presses for quads).
• Stick with them for an entire training block (mesocycle).
• Repeat the same exercises week after week to force your body to adapt [04:19].

This is where tracking becomes critical. If you’re switching exercises every week, you can’t see if you’re actually getting stronger. SetsApart helps you maintain this directed adaptation by making it easy to stick with the same exercises and track your progressive overload week to week, rather than constantly switching movements and losing the adaptive signal.

3 Rules for Specific Training

1. Never Lose Track of the Goal

Before adding an exercise to your program, ask yourself: “How does this help me reach my goal?” [05:09]. If you want bigger legs but you’re spending 20 minutes on a Bosu ball for “stability,” you’ve lost the plot. If it doesn’t directly build the muscle or the strength you’re after, it’s probably “fluff” [06:28].

Research on training volume shows that hard sets close to failure are what drive hypertrophy. Spending time on low-intensity “accessory” work that doesn’t challenge your muscles is time you could spend on another hard set for your target muscle group.

2. Keep it Basic

The most effective programs often look “basic” to the untrained eye [07:45]. Don’t get distracted by fancy “Hollywood” training styles. Stick to the foundational movements that provide the best stimulus-to-fatigue ratio. If you can’t explain why you’re doing an exercise to your grandma, you’re likely overcomplicating it [06:21].

This aligns with the concept of the minimum effective dose—you don’t need 10 different quad exercises. You need 2-3 that you can progressively overload consistently.

3. Variation Within the “Big Tent”

Specific doesn’t mean boring. You still need variation to prevent progress from stalling, but that variation must stay under the “Big Tent of Specificity” [08:18].

• Good Variation: Switching from High Bar Squats to Hack Squats for a few months to keep growing your quads.
• Bad Variation: Switching from Squats to one-legged balancing acts that don’t actually overload the muscle [09:05].

The key is choosing exercises that still target the same muscle groups and allow for progressive overload. When you rotate exercises, make sure the new movement still targets the same muscle group with similar mechanical tension. For more on selecting the right exercises for your goals, check out our guide on how many exercises you need.

The Bottom Line

Specificity is about moving in one direction. You can change lanes (variation), but all lanes must lead to the same destination: more muscle and more strength [09:22].

Stop trying to be a “jack of all trades” in a single workout. Focus your efforts, stay consistent with your lifts, and let directed adaptation do the heavy lifting for you.

Track your specific exercises, ensure you’re doing enough hard sets per muscle group, and watch your progress compound over time. If you’re short on time and need to prioritize your training, read our guide on the minimum effective dose for muscle growth to learn how to apply specificity with maximum efficiency.

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Source

This article was inspired by and summarizes key insights from the following video. Check out the video for more detail and subscribe to the channel—it’s a great resource for evidence-based training.

Watch the full video: The Principle of Specificity | RP University