I've been thinking about this for a while. Making conditioning extremely specific is just repetitive and will probably lead to a higher chance of injury, especially if you're already going ham in your sport.
That's a great point. I think that might be missed, even when you end up with a bunch of grad students or up. It seems easy for everyone to get caught on the bandwagon of specific specific specific, but even then the idea of great being the enemy of good might come into play.
For sure. Most of the time you need to assess the athlete's limiter to reap the most reward. Could be respiratory, O2 deliver, O2 utilization... Look up Evan Peikon if you don't know of him already. Tons of valuable and practical information on conditioning