The Sport Truly Doesn't Matter

I've been a strength coach for over a decade, and if you asked me for the biggest lesson I've learned, it would probably surprise you.

The sport truly doesn't matter.

I know, that's almost offensive. We love our sports. We build identities around them. We spend weekends watching them, evenings practicing them, and years trying to master them. Of course they matter.

Here's where they don't: when an athlete walks into the gym for the first time, I don't really care whether they play football, lacrosse, volleyball, want to be a weightlifter, powerlifter, or want to be a better dancer. I care, but it doesn't change the approach, at least not yet.

Before we worry about sport-specific performance, we have a much more important job. We have to build an athlete. The behaviors, the mindset, the belief in doing hard things, doing those things, and showing up day in and day out.

There is a constant pressure in sports to specialize as early as possible, especially in a world of click bait and instagram reels and all this noise. Every exercise has to look like the game. Every movement has to transfer directly. Every session has to be optimized for one specific outcome.

Here's my firm belief: it doesn't. It mustn't. So here's my ask of new athletes: Be a generalist first. Build a body that's strong. Build a body that's powerful. Build a body that's resilient enough to tolerate years of practice. Most importantly, build the habits that allow all of that to happen consistently.

Squats don't change because you went from a rugby kit to a singlet. That strength endures. Cleans don't become irrelevant if it's a tackle or a rebound or firing out of the blocks. Showing up on time doesn't change because you switched sports. Neither does learning how to recover, communicate, work through frustration, or keep promises to yourself. Those are athletic skills long before they're football skills or weightlifting skills.

Far too often I watch athletes skip the foundation in search of the perfect exercise. They want the most specific drill before they've mastered the most universal ones. They chase optimization before they've built consistency. They want the niche movement but not the squat, the advanced plyometric but not the warm-up, the new recovery tool but not eight hours of sleep.

The truth is that the things supporting a season usually aren't the exciting things. They're the boring things repeated for years. That's athletic development. It's not preparing someone for one season but rather preparing them to enjoy a lifetime of competing.

So when I say the sport doesn't matter, I don't mean your passion doesn't matter. It matters enormously. I mean that when you first step into a strength space, your first job isn't becoming a better football player or a better lifter. Your first job is becoming the kind of person who can get better at anything. Learn to show up. Learn to train with intensity and for the love of all things sport, get strong, because strong is always better than weak. Develop power so you can express that strength. Build movement patterns that lets you keep doing the things you love.

So get good on your way to great. Enjoy the steps along the way and earn your increases. Specialization is not bad, it's just a matter of ordering things. So build a solid base on your way to elite performance. In my experience, that's also where the fun lies, in that pursuit.

The irony is that almost nobody gets to an elite level by starting with the sport. They get there by first becoming an athlete. And in my experience, the hardest skill to coach has never been the squat, the clean, or the sprint or the skip pull. It's showing up tomorrow and every tomorrow to get the job done, even as the job changes.