How sports specific is cardio?
To what degree is cardio/endurance training sports specific? Are there any academic references detailing it?
Background:
I recently (a little over a month ago) starting training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ). When I was trying to looking something else up, I came over this question here and more than one answer suggested that cardio is highly sports specific. But that seems to contradict this article. It is also at odds with my own very limited experience since my running improved noticeably after I started BJJ.
So, I'm certain there is some degree of cardio being sports specific, but to what degree is it true? Are there academic citations? And if it is highly sports specific, is there anything that would help for those of us that can't make it to the gym as often as we like due to schedule conflicts (single person drills, etc)?
Thank you.
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Apart from general fitness which helps to some extent it really is the type of sport and specific effort of that sport. Of course cardio is itself a form of effort different from the effort required in other sports. Here also comes the difference between aerobic and anaerobic effort.
Related to you example with running an BJJ:
Running is a cyclic sport and the fitness you gain from it is not like to type in martial arts unless you are alternating the rhythm like inserting sprints in a jogging session.
Striking arts specific effort is not cyclic since you have bursts of explosiveness on attacks and then more relaxed intervals. The effort here is aerobic.
Grappling arts are also not cyclic as you have periods of effort combined with periods of relaxation. Here the effort is different from striking arts since you will not be having the same explosive contractions and you will probably deal with anaerobic effort for instance a period of constant contraction while trying to keep a choke as tight as possible.
At the novice stages, all activities can improve general fitness. As one progresses, however, all attributes improve in more activity-specific ways. This is less true of attributes like strength and more true of attributes like cardio.
We have a general cardiovascular capability, which can be measured by activities we are not accustomed to or by VO2MAX. But improving one's cardio becomes a sport-specific project quite early on.
This New York Times article is light on the science, but has the gist correct and references relevant papers:
Each sport uses highly specific muscles and nerves. Using an elliptical cross-trainer may feel as if it is exercising your running muscles, but it is not giving you the same kind of training that running does. Nor does it train the muscles you need for cycling.
“You can maintain your cardiovascular capacity by cross-training, but it is extremely difficult to maintain your performance when you rely on cross-training,” Dr. Tanaka said. “This is because you are violating the principle of the specificity of training.”
To my knowledge, this is fairly well-known in exercise science: an aerobic base is fairly general, but beyond that, cardio is largely activity-specific (especially compared to strength).
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