The principle of individuality in training refers to the fact that a given training stimulus induces different responses in the individual athlete. Coaches’ experience even suggests the existence of two different groups, the responders and nonresponders. This variability in training response is influenced by many different factors, such as genetic predisposition, mental status, pretraining status, training experience, age, and sex. Many athletes fail in trying to achieve an expected performance enhancement by copying published training regimes from other successful athletes. From a prevention perspective, the adjustment of training and exercises to each individual athlete is a major requirement. Training experience and age, for example, involve the danger of false or excessive loads that may lead to overuse syndromes.

Training regimes that are designed for an experienced athlete need to be adapted in terms of intensity, volume, duration of rest periods, and choice of exercise to serve for a training novice. Training for kids or adolescent athletes cannot just be a reduced expert level training regime but needs to consider the specific requirements of the maturing organism.

From a preventive point of view, specificity is one of the most important principles a coach should have in mind when designing a training program. A good example is strength training, where the exercise must be specific to the type of strength required and is therefore related to the particular demands of the event. The coach should have knowledge of the predominant types of muscular activity associated with his/her particular event, the movement pattern involved, and the type of strength required. Although specificity is important, it is necessary in every schedule to include exercises of a general nature. These exercises may not relate too closely to the movement of any athletic event, but they do give a balanced development and provide a strong base upon which highly specific exercise can be built [8].

Each event or discipline has specific requirements the athlete needs to fulfill. From a competitive and a preventive point of view, it is the basic motivation to know precisely what a discipline or event requires in terms of the different motoric skills (Fig. 7.1).

Is the athlete exposed to high external forces or is it necessary to create them internally by muscular action? Does he/she need to accelerate his body or just parts of it? What level of motoric skills is required and how long does the athlete have to execute the sports activity? Is endurance a limiting factor and is it more of aerobic nature or is the anaerobic portion dominant?

To match the principle of specificity, all these questions and many more need to be answered. The result of these efforts is a detailed and individual requirement profile for each athlete and each discipline or event. The individual component is given by the specific grade of aspiration that may reach from the recreational to elite level.

A more preventive perspective is primarily concerned with locating a possible dysbalance or unilateral load given by the structure of the sports or understanding the common sites of injury for a particular event. Tennis as a representative for court sports typically requires one strong racket arm. Together with the dominant arm, the whole-body side is exposed to unilateral loads when hitting the ball. Excessive or enduring training induces major dysbalances that may cause severe overstress situations in particular parts of the athlete’s body.

Skiing is another good example for dominant parts of the body that are exposed to high stress and loads. High external forces have to be compensated mostly by the muscle groups of the lower limb and this was typically considered to be the limiting factor. Coaches’ experience shows that many athletes complain about severe back pain as a result of emphasized strength training of the lower limb muscular system. An adjustment of the training philosophy following the ideas of functional training (6.3) helped reduce the back pain phenomenon significantly.

Coming back from an injury or training under the influence of pain may provoke motoric compensation patterns. Coaches need to detect situations like this and adjust the design of the training program to the specific needs of the athlete.

This indicates that the preventive approach of a need analysis should provide specific exercises that would strengthen particular joints or muscles with the purpose of preventing injuries or at least reducing their severity. This may improve the quality of performance by keeping the better athletes on the field of play longer.