Howdy,
Improving relative strength when athletes are weak provides an easy initial solution that works great. Just, for the sake of God, stop increasing load forever (especially if you aren’t “The World’s Strongest Man” competitor)… As athletes get stronger, the more special (heavy sled, hills…), and specific drills (free sprint with very light resistance/sleds…) become the avenue for improvement. But general strength must be maintained (general, special & specific). Because, as Pavel Tsatsouline says: “Strength is the mother of all qualities. Speed, power, resiliency, endurance are all built off of strength.” Non of these qualities can be maximized or enhanced without strength! Having a strong base layer of strength is key for all athletes no matter what their respective sport…
The younger or weaker the athlete, the greater role that general strength plays in improving things like jump, speed, change of direction. The more experienced, then the more special and specific exercises/training play in improving them.
For example, as you see below, greater relative squatting strength has been shown to have significant performance benefits up to the level of at least twice bodyweight, which is quite strong indeed, especially for larger athletes. Practice your sport, but do not discount the benefits of getting stronger.
Yes, strength plays a role in getting faster, it’s the foundation to power, and power is needed to sprint fast. Increasing strength will help you get faster if your strength levels aren’t optimal. But past a certain point just trying to get stronger could be even detrimental. Strength is essential, especially for athletes who aren’t naturally explosive. However, increasing strength should mainly be a mean to boost power, which helps produce more speed and agility. What do you do to keep improving once you past a certain point? You must twitch your focus to more “rate of force development” (RFD) exercises as well as on transfer movements (they are offten the same). The purpose of transfer exercises is to learn to apply the strength you have in movements with a coordination pattern similar to fundamental movements like sprinting, jumping, throwing, or changing direction (remember that if you have low level of strength to start with, you won’t have much to transfer). RFD movements focus on speed and explosiveness. As we said, jumps, throws, loaded jumps, power variations of the Olympic lifts, are good examples (single leg and bilateral). You can also include loaded sprints, but with these, you must be careful not to have a negative transfer on sprinting mechanics. The Bosch clean is essentially a single-leg power clean variation that includes a horizontal component as wel as a vertical one. The main goal is to practice applying maximal fore and power in the same vector as in a sprint.
If the coordination structure of an exercise is similar to a sporting action, there can be a positive transfer of strength and power to the sport (see this as the bridge between strength training and the sport movement). But if the coordination structure is the same as the fundamental movement, you could have a decrease in performance through changes in movement mechanics or contrction velocity. If a resisted sprinting drill leads to a drop in speed of 10% or more, it will lead to faulty mechanics and slower force application leading to a negative effect on performance. The more complex the motor skill is, the easier it is to mess the coordination pattern by overloading it. For example, it’s much easier to negatively impact the mechanics and velocity of a sprint or throw than that of a vertical jump (the later having a simple mechanic). That’s why loaded jump squats are effective at improving power and jumping height (the optimal load is the one with which you will have the highest power output, which is around 20-30% of your maximum squat), but loaded sprints or heavy throws are not always good. Note that loaded throws and sprints can be useful as long as the performance drop-off is less than 10%. But even then, the risk of a negative impact on performance is more significant than with simpler actions. That’s why I like to use prowler sprints as a transfer movement toward sprinting (its coordination pattern is close enough to the sprint to have a positive transfer, but not similar enough to mess up mechanics. Make sure to use ranges of motion that are the most needed for your sport. Using chains (and similar) and single leg variations are very smart as well.
The three first qualities to be affected by neurological fatigue are speed, jumping and grip strength. Training for strength, power and speed all have a high neurological demand. Doing too much strength work can mask the ability to run fast by draining away the neurological resources, making them less readily available. At a certain point, increasing strength will have decreasing benefits on increasing power, if any at all. While the muscles adapt by becoming stronger, bones and ligaments stay the same. Tendons do not have the same rate of adaptation as muscles do. In the and, an increase in loading will carry more potential risks than rewards. Among other things (i.e. spinal load if doing double-leg squat), increasing neurological demands will increase the risk of injury.
Chasing numbers after athletes are 2xBW squat/deadlift will not improve their sporting performance. It will make them better at producing high force over longer time periods. Non strength sport athletes very rarely (if ever) reach peak force in games but its the rate at which force is produced that is the most critical attribute once athletes have developed maximal strength capacity (max force outputs). This is where strength needs to be maintained (if you are not training force you are losing force), and high velocity stimulus is now the main focus (sprint/COD, jumps/plyo, loaded jumps…). In order to get better at a task, you must complete that specific task! For example, you can do all the “drills” in the world, but unless you are sprinting fast, you not maximize your training time and adaptation! Athletes who do not give maximal efforts (at least 95% of their fastest time) or allow enough rest/recovery between sets (2-5 mins), will not get faster due to fatigue and the athlete not tapping into fast twitch motor units.
But, be aware, I think that “2xBW” rule is great when we are talking about sprinters (and similar), but there are some sports (I mean, many sports) where highly demanding deceleration (slowing down, COD, “cutting”…) with fewer steps is very important (the highest forces needed because it’s about eccentric m. contraction) for overall SAQ abilities (soccer, basketball, tennis…); or some sports where centrifugal force matters (short track speed skating i.e.), and where isometric strength matters a lot. It means that, in those sports, we should probably lift over “2xBW” in order to maximise performance (especially single-legged), because there are logically higher forces needed to be applied to the ground compred to the linear sprinting with preceded acceleration – concentric contr. “only” (but including predominantly ecc. or/and ISO strength – depending on sports specificity). If you don’t know how to calculate those extra forces that are needed, once you reach “2xBW”, go up to 20-30 kg more (gradually) and you cant’t mistake that much. PS: 2xBW rule is good for back squat and deadlift, there are different rules for different exercises – but more on this in one of the following articles or webinars… Also, I am not saying that only after reaching 2xBW we can start with plyo work or similar, but be aware that in this way we are simply more safe when we are talking about high intensity plyo work, and it doesn’t make sense to lift much more because we are risking injuries at least. …Yes, your foot hits the ground with a force equal to 3 times your BW when you run at a pace of six minutes per mile. But, up to 70% of force of your foot strike is stored in your Achilles tendon and other tendons. This energy is released by your muscles and tendons (more) to drive you forward for your next step. This is one of the reasons why we don’t go over 2xBW with some exercises (muscle contribution is not huge compared to some other activities that aren’t done by using the stretch-shortening cycle). This is also why we never load our tendons too much when working loaded plyos, otherwise an injury risk would be extremely high…
If you want to get faster you need to employ “horizontal” force too (sled work, sprinting, running plyo drills…), not only vertical lifts (many coaches say vertical lifts/forces don’t work at all, but not bad from the “injury prevention” standpoint and building good basic mechanics). Also, you need to time your athletes over and over again which is perfect for motivation at least (way better engagement factor during training as well – competitiveness will lead to maximal efforts; way better difference in output when you see numbers: using force plates when lifting as well, throwing med. balls, VBT, baseball – pocket radar, soccer shooting, kids jump higher when you measure – Mike Boyle measures once a week). If anyone wants to be faster, you need to know how fast he/she currently is. Knowing 10 yards dash time is a piece 1 of the puzzle. Several studies have now found that strength training with a smaller amount of fatigue in each set (as identified by a smaller degree of velocity loss when performing each rep with maximal effort) can lead to similar or even greater gains in certain strength and athletic performance outcomes (i.e. sprinting). Again, timing athletes sprints gives instant feedback to the coach and athlete, gives motivation, can give an objective figure to aid the coach in auto regulation of the session.
SAQ and elastic/power training are all movements that require the CNS to express high velocity outputs and high threshold fast twitch motor unit recruitment (called neural efficiency). Many coaches just keep banging away with max strength (slow velocity) which only leads to athletes who are “slow and strong”. For the non strength sport athlete the focu is on creating strong, powerful, fast and efficient athletes that can execute their skills with the highest physical capacity to increase sporting performance and decrease chance of injury.
The sporting skill and injury “prevention” should be the main focus (no point of lifting heavy, sprinting fast or jumping high if the athlete can’t express their sporting skill at high levels or they are injury prone). Remember who you are training and understand that numbers do not win games but the ability to execute their skill at high levels while being powerful/fast can. So, strength is important but not at the expense of everything else. Strong enough is good enough!
Let’s see what Mike Boyle thinks: “Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge weight room person but, I think as strength coaches we have overvalued strength in the weight room as a tool to develop speed. We still need to lift for armor building, injury prevention and a host of other reasons but, I am no longer sure how much effect conventional weight room strength has on speed past the beginner/intermediate level.”
PS: As we said, strength improves the athletes ability to APPLY large forces into the ground. We allso know that acceleration is correlated with the athletes ability to apply large forces into the ground over longer time periods (than top end speed). This is why relative strength and cueing athletes to PUSH (not step) is critical to maximise short sprint (acceleration) performance.
Research shows that relative strength (how strong you are relative to your own bodyweight) is the greatest predictor of performance in sprint, vertical jump and COD, which are key indicators of athletic performance. Heavy training is superior for maximizing strength adaptations. Although lifting heavy weights will help improve your power, there is plenty of evidence to show that improvements in power are maximized when you also regularly do low-load (lighter) exercises that require you to move fast. So, the main focus for improving athletic performance is to improve trength (force production) and power (rate of force production). That said, to gauge your strength and power, you do need to do exercises consistently in order to compare your numbers from previous workouts. Otherwise, if you are changing exercises all the time, you would have no way to gauge improvements. Are you able to lift same the weight for one more rep? Or lift more weight for the same amount of reps? Or do a certain number of reps faster than you did before using the same load?… You should get stronger every week, as long as you are changing your program every month or two. Because the human body adapts, everyone reaches a plateau at some point within a training program, and they are unable to keep progressively overloading the same exercises. This is where applying the principle of variation comes in. If you are an athlete, as a general rule you should change the exercises in your program every 4-6 weeks or so depending on how many days per week you are training. This gives your body enough time to adapt and progress on the exercises in each program, but it usually isn’t a long enough training period for the program to become boring or cause you to develop overuse issues from moving and loading your body in a specific way.
Last but not least, when designing programs, let’s see what kind of philosophy Daniel Kadlec has:
- 70% time-tested methods (i.e. sprints, jumps, barbell lifts, conditioning);
- 20% what we think will work, based on empiric knowledge, common sense, individual needs and insights from other domains (i.e. motor learning and skill acquisition principles translated to S&C);
- 10% I don’t wanna say random (as seen with “Pierres elite performance” or Seedman’s utter BS), but fun and enjoyable, outside-of-the-box-ish exercises with low risk-high reward potential (worst case: no adaptation; best case: dopamine overflow).
PRACTICAL RECOMMENDATIONS
- 40-70% of 1RM is best for power output. If your max velocity with no load isn’t great (if you’re strong but generally slow, max velocity with no load isn’t great) then you should do more pure velocity stuff (bodyweight sprint, plyos, and very light weights, even reverse band stuff to achieve higher take off velocities…). If someone is quite fast but weak, try to get stronger! You can’t just put everyone on a high power program, because if someone sucks at strength (max strength predominantly), he/she will have better power outcomes (larger increases in power output and jump height) by getting stronger predominantly. You need to put someone on a program that is specific to where he/she is bad. You need to profile yourself in order to see where you’re bad at. One good, and very simple, test in order to see if you are strong or explossive is a simple vertical jump measurements by not using an arm(s) swing. Make a very slow half-squat and jump up; now make an explossive jump by utilizing stretch-shortening cycle (a normal run-in jump, or off a short – up to 20cm height – plyo box). The difference in height will show you where you are better at. If you are much better at SSC type jump, it means you need max strength more, and vice versa. If you are good at both (not much difference), train both equally (it also means you are both strong and explossive – which isn’t rare for sure). But, how to determine an optimal jump height so we know if we jump high enough? Just take a look at a high-level athlete who is tall as you and very successuful in the same sport you participate in (or average height of few of them, which is more accurate). If you jump as high as he/she, that’s it (of course, it can always go up, but that’s a different topic). You can do the same aforementioned test but single-legged, which is more specific to running. You can also do one modification for a broad jump if you need horizontal speed more (not only vert. jump). But, all in all, if you are a poor vertical jumper, you are most probably not that fast neither. Before we implement those tests, we should let athletes practice a bit because most are coordination-demanding. Otherwise, results will not be accurate enough.
- Also, eccentric overload training is often useful for anyone absorbing high forces via landing and deceleration (COD too, as a part of deceleration). Put 15-20% higher load on a barbell and have 2 spotters that will help you to take it off or push the load up… But be aware that eccentric overload training can give you muscle damage and CNS fatigue so dose it smart in order not to interfere with your current training and competition schedule (you need to make a good periodization). The easiest way to conduct eccentric overload training is where your partner(s) either push you down (light loads) or up (heavy loads). Speed needs to be lower to moderate (depends on the level of fitness and training phase). Or, if you do it by yourself, do the concentric part with both limbs, and the eccentric part with one limb (many exercises allow you that – box squat e.g., load should be 70%+ of your both limbs’ 1RM). Eccentric training develops our body “brakes”, which is very important in team sports at least (the one who brakes faster will be more dangerous in various aspects: feints, CODs, cuts, fake moves…). Other than that, ecc. training develops the muscle-tendon junction (at least) very well (the weakest point in the muscle-tendon unit, making it susceptible to strain injuries). Eccentric training must be short (CNS fatigue and muscle damage risks), 15-20 mins, 2 times a week, 4-5 sets of 8-10 reps (one exercise at the “Exxentric kBox” e.g.). It can be aslo implemented as a first part of the training, or(and) as a part of the PAP training (after good warm-up). Mechanical load during ecc. tr. is very high – therefore collagen builds up very well, which means tendons too. Tendon injuries are very often in sport, and we know how long return-to-play period lasts in this case (way longer than after muscle injuries).
- Greater relative squatting strength has been shown to have significant performance benefits up to the level of at least twice bodyweight, which is quite strong indeed, especially for larger athletes. As athletes get stronger, the more special (heavy sled, hills…), and specific drills (free sprint with very light resistance/sleds…) become the avenue for improvement. But general strength must be maintained (general, special & specific). Having a strong base layer of strength is key for all athletes no matter what their respective sport… What do you do to keep improving once you past a certain point? You must twitch your focus to more “rate of force development” (RFD) exercises as well as on transfer movements (they are offten the same). The purpose of transfer exercises is to learn to apply the strength you have in movements with a coordination pattern similar to fundamental movements like sprinting, jumping, throwing, or changing direction (remember that if you have low level of strength to start with, you won’t have much to transfer). RFD movements focus on speed and explosiveness. As we said, jumps, throws, loaded jumps, power variations of the Olympic lifts, are good examples (single leg and bilateral). You can also include loaded sprints, but with these, you must be careful not to have a negative transfer on sprinting mechanics. If you load your sprint, or any fast movement (punches, throwing), that’s not bad but only if you don’t lose more than around 10% of your speed. So it still needs to be very fast. If you lose speed excessively, you are worsening technique, train slower movement… it’s not that good. …The Bosch clean is essentially a single-leg power clean variation that includes the horizontal component as well as the vertical one. The main goal is to practice applying maximal force and power in the same vector as in a sprint or acceleration. If the coordination structure of an exercise is similar to a sporting action, there can be a positive transfer of strength and power to the sport (see this as the bridge between strength training and the sport movement). But if the coordination structure is the same as the fundamental movement, you could have a decrease in performance through changes in movement mechanics or contraction velocity. As we said, if a resisted sprinting drill leads to a drop in speed of 10% or more, it will lead to faulty mechanics and slower force application leading to a negative effect on performance. The more complex the motor skill is, the easier it is to mess the coordination pattern by overloading it. For example, it’s much easier to negatively impact the mechanics and velocity of a sprint or throw than that of a vertical jump (the later having a simple mechanic). That’s why loaded jump squats are effective at improving power and jumping height (the optimal load is the one with which you will have the highest power output, which is around 20-30% of your maximum squat – a bit lower range if you perform the pure SSC plyos which is the most dangerous for tendons when loaded), but loaded sprints or heavy throws are not always good (when it comes to throwing, you will improve power just by strengthening shoulder stabilizers – perturbations and similar, and antagonistic muscles – throwing brakers; and of course agonists with similar patterns as throwing but with slower and controlled loaded moves – but this, and similar, is FAR from the only option). Note that loaded throws and sprints can be useful as long as the performance drop-off is less than 10%. But even then, the risk of a negative impact on performance is more significant than with simpler actions. That’s why I like to use prowler sprints as a transfer movement toward sprinting (its coordination pattern is close enough to the sprint to have a positive transfer, but not similar enough to mess up mechanics. Make sure to use ranges of motion that are the most needed for your sport. Using chains (and similar) and single leg variations are very smart as well. Also, SAQ and elastic/power training are all movements that require the CNS to express high velocity outputs and high threshold fast twitch motor unit recruitment (called neural efficiency). Many coaches just keep banging away with max strength (slow velocity) which only leads to athletes who are “slow and strong”. For the non strength sport athlete the focus is on creating strong, powerful, fast and efficient athletes.
- The three first qualities to be affected by neurological fatigue are speed, jumping and grip strength. Training for strength, power and speed all have a high neurological demand. Doing too much strength work can mask the ability to run fast by draining away the neurological resources, making them less readily available. At a certain point, increasing strength will have decreasing benefits on increasing power, if any at all. While the muscles adapt by becoming stronger, bones and ligaments stay the same. Tendons do not have the same rate of adaptation as muscles do. In the and, an increase in loading will carry more potential risks than rewards. Among other things (e.g. spinal load if doing classic double-leg squat), increasing neurological demands will increase the risk of injury.
- Be aware, I think that “2xBW” rule (1RM) is great when we are talking about sprinters (and similar), but there are some sports (I mean, many sports) where highly demanding deceleration (slowing down, COD, “cutting”…) with fewer steps is very important (the highest forces needed because it’s about eccentric m. contraction) for overall SAQ abilities (soccer, basketball, tennis…); or some sports where centrifugal force matters (short track speed skating i.e.), and where isometric strength matters a lot. It means that, in those sports, we should probably lift over “2xBW” in order to maximise performance (especially single-legged), because there are logically higher forces needed to be applied to the ground compred to the linear sprinting with preceded acceleration – concentric contr. “only” (but including predominantly ecc. or/and ISO strength – depending on sports specificity). If you don’t know how to calculate those extra forces that are needed, once you reach “2xBW”, go up to 20-30 kg more (gradually) and you cant’t mistake that much. PS: 2xBW rule is good for back squat and deadlift, there are different rules for different exercises – but more on this in one of the following articles or webinars… Also, I am not saying that only after reaching 2xBW we can start with plyo work or similar, but be aware that in this way we are simply more safe when we are talking about high intensity plyo work, and it doesn’t make sense to lift much more because we are risking injuries at least. …Yes, your foot hits the ground with a force equal to 3 times your BW when you run at a pace of six minutes per mile. But, up to 70% of force of your foot strike is stored in your Achilles tendon and other tendons. This energy is released by your muscles and tendons (more) to drive you forward for your next step. This is one of the reasons why we don’t go over 2xBW with some exercises (muscle contribution is not huge compared to some other activities that aren’t done by using the stretch-shortening cycle). And this is the huge reason why we need plyo work in most sports. This is also why we never load our tendons too much when working loaded plyos, otherwise an injury risk would be extremely high… …So, research shows that relative strength (how strong you are relative to your own bodyweight) is the greatest predictor of performance in sprint, vertical jump and COD, which are key indicators of athletic performance. Heavy training is superior for maximizing strength adaptations. Although lifting heavy weights will help improve your power, there is plenty of evidence to show that improvements in power are maximized when you also regularly do low-load (lighter) exercises that require you to move fast. So, the main focus for improving athletic performance is to improve strength (force production) and power (rate of force production). That said, to gauge your strength and power, you do need to do exercises consistently in order to compare your numbers from previous workouts.
- If you want to get faster (linear speed), you need to employ “horizontal” force too (sled work, sprinting, running plyo drills…), not only vertical lifts (many coaches say vertical lifts/forces don’t work at all, but not bad from the “injury prevention” standpoint and building good basic mechanics). Also, you need to time your athletes over and over again which is perfect for motivation at least (way better engagement factor during training as well – competitiveness will lead to maximal efforts; way better difference in output when you see numbers: using force plates when lifting as well, throwing med. balls with inserted speedometer, VBT, baseball – pocket radar, soccer ball shooting…). If anyone wants to be faster, you need to know how fast he/she currently is. Knowing 10 yards dash time is a piece 1 of the puzzle. Again, timing athletes sprints gives instant feedback to the coach and athlete, gives motivation, can give an objective figure to aid the coach in auto regulation of the session. Power sled work (and similar things with some kind of resistance) is another great example (more horizontal power development). The load that responds to 150% of your best 10 yards time is the right load for the power sled work (lets say your best 10 yards time is 1.5s, so 1.5×1.50=2.25, which means you need to adjust load so your athlete runs 10 yards in 2.25 seconds).
For the love of movement,
Luka