I've seen a lot of confusion in the channels lately (I'm a night owl) over which types of abilities are needed to for Sp Atk and Atk. In Gen 3, there aren't different damage types for the same types of attacks, where as in the later generations types like Fighting would have Special damage based abilities and Attack damaged based abilities, Gen 3 works differently.
Physical Types
Bug
Fighting
Flying
Ghost
Ground
Normal
Poison
Rock
Steel
For Example, if I wanted to give my fully Atk/Spd Dragonite a stab ability, I would give him a flying type attack but not a Dragon Type attack. A Dragon Attack would give moderate damage on a full Atk/Spd Dragonite, but a move like Focus Punch, Earthquake, or Steel Wing would be better because their damage is based on Atk where as Dragon Attacks are based on Sp Atk. Don't let move names like "Dragon Claw" confuse you, it's a Special Attack, not a Physical Attack.
Special Types
Dark
Dragon
Electric
Fire
Grass
Ice
Psychic
Water
Just like if I wanted my Gengar to be a more effective lead, instead of using a Ghost attack, I would take advantage of his vast move-pool using Sp Atk based abilities types like Dark, Electric, and Fire as opposed to Ghost which is Physical.
I hope this cleared things up for the people having trouble. I myself had difficulty with this as before I started playing this game last week, I had been playing Smogon.