Can heavy strength training hinder speed development?

Do we focus too much on strength when trying to develop an athlete’s speed?

No, I don’t believe so. The issue lies in the type of strength we emphasize.

According to the Bondarchuk pyramid, strength ranges from general to competition event specific. Both general and specific strengths are crucial for building foundational physical qualities and enhancing velocity with greater dynamic correspondence to the sport. However, the tendency is to concentrate excessively on general strength, particularly maximum strength, with the mistaken belief that it fully transfers to performance improvements. It doesn’t.

All athletes – lifters, sprinters, or others – engage in lifting, often heavy lifting. But this is just one component. It’s akin to baking a cake where you need a variety of ingredients like flour, eggs, milk, chocolate, coloring, and fruit. The balance is key. Similarly, a well rounded diet isn’t just about one type of food. As I’ve aged, I’ve realized the importance of a varied diet, in a way that I didn’t recognize before. I love meat, but it doesn’t mean every day I just eat steak. In fact, the older I get, I realise my constitution just can’t take steak. I need those other things, even if I didn’t know I needed them before. My body lets me know through how I respond to eating different things.

The same principle applies to athletes. The issue isn’t the focus on strength, per se, but rather how we categorize and integrate different types of strength in training. That’s the critical aspect to consider.

What is it about heavy strength training that makes you think it’s often at the detriment to developing speed?

Heavy strength training is, indeed, key. But the critical factor is how it’s incorporated into a program.

The problem often lies in how training becomes monotonous with a high density of heavy lifting. The primary purpose of heavy lifting should be “we gym to jump.” This involves stimulating the nervous system, deactivating safety mechanisms, and enhancing neural factors to recruit more and bigger muscle fibres, as well as improving the timing of these fibres. The goal is to prepare the body for high impacts.

Heavy lifting is not just about increasing muscle size or tissue quality, but primarily about enabling high impact activities and improving coordination.

In the first 6-8 weeks of training, heavy lifting might take a larger volume to develop this quality. However, as training progresses, the focus should shift to maintenance rather than continuous heavy lifting.

The issue arises when we become fixated on the progression in the gym, failing to recognize that limiting or even reducing the intensity of lifting can be beneficial. Research shows that a bit of detraining in maximal strength during periods of overreaching, when the aim is to enhance explosiveness or speed, is a part of the process.

The problem with heavy lifting surfaces when the sole focus is on increasing weight without considering speed of movement or coordination.

If the goal becomes merely to lift heavier weights at any cost, we lose sight of the primary objective, which is to improve performance in our sport. The intermediary goal in this context is improving our ability to jump.

The mantra “we gym to jump” encapsulates this philosophy.

You mentioned trunk discipline and shin discipline being crucial to proper sequencing. How can we promote “bum before back” in and out of the weight room?

“Bum before back” essentially means prioritizing the dominance of the glutes and the hinging action, while keeping the spine relatively inactive. This concept is about understanding the correct movement patterns, such as in exercises like good mornings or reverse hypers. These exercises develop hip extension with the trunk as the primary mover. Executed properly, the glutes are the driving force. But often individuals end up overusing their back, which is counterproductive.

To develop “bum before back,” focus on exercises where the spine remains stable, the diaphragm is set, and the movement is driven by the hips and glutes. This involves good hinging techniques. Surprisingly, many coaches still struggle with teaching proper hinging, which is crucial in exercises like Romanian dead lifts.

It’s about maintaining a balance in the body’s core, including the obliques and glutes, during these movements.

To be more concise, in the gym, promote proper hinging with a stable spine, ensuring that the hips and glutes control the movement relative to the degree of flexion and extension. Outside the gym, focus on the sequencing of compression and extension, even in vertical movements. It’s about distributing the load appropriately during movements like box jumps or plyometrics. This means not just focusing on the lower legs but involving the hips and centre of mass in a controlled manner.

The key to promoting efficient movement, which is what “bum before back” is all about, is through coaching. Encourage and reward efficient movement, and use constraints and cues to help athletes distinguish between efficient and inefficient movements. The exercises themselves, many of which have been used for decades, are not the issue; it’s more about the order and proportion in which they are executed, as well as the coaching and observation skills.

If these movements can’t be coached correctly in the gym, it’s unlikely they’ll be executed properly in field or track environments.

How can coaches get a clearer understanding of whether improvements in force are actually what an athlete needs?

Gaining clarity on whether an athlete needs improvements in force starts with understanding the normative strength levels for your squad or division. Knowing what constitutes “strong” or “weak” in your specific context helps in assessing needs. However, I advocate for a balanced approach where all athletes, regardless of their strength levels, engage in lifting. The difference lies in the proportion and purpose of lifting for each athlete.

For those who are already strong, lifting remains a part of the regimen but with a reduced focus. The lifting sessions for these athletes might be geared more towards potentiating other activities, using loaded exercises to stimulate the body before explosive training. As athletes get stronger, we can get more creative with how we incorporate heavy lifts into their training.

Conversely, weaker or less experienced athletes, like younger or female athletes, might require a greater density of lifting with more volume to stimulate adaptation. When you observe certain physical abilities like a high countermovement jump or good range of motion in their movements, you can infer that their relative strength, especially around the pelvis, is adequate.

Determining when an athlete is “strong enough” hinges on these observations. Elite athletes who are exceptionally strong in the gym offer more flexibility in training. We can be more creative and sometimes step away from heavy lifting without significant detriment. However, for those who are less strong, even a short break from strength training can make a difference.

The key isn’t just whether an athlete needs to improve force, but understanding the balance and proportion of strength training in their overall program. This includes considering the transfer of general qualities to specific speed and strength qualities, which are integral for athletic performance.

Do you think that training the calf complex and hip flexors could be the missing link for many programmes?

Yes, focusing on the calf complex and hip flexors is often overlooked in many training programs. Generally, when we talk about strength, especially heavy strength, we think of compound and Olympic lifts like squats, dead lifts, and cleans. But this is just one aspect of leg power.

Ken Clark’s and Peter Weyand’s two mass model suggests that the thighs are like hammers, and the ankles are the springs and nails. If the ankles are stiff springs, they require significant thigh force to load and explode. Often, the limiting factor for less explosive athletes isn’t their thigh strength but rather their ankle stiffness and foot placement.

Improving ankle stiffness and foot placement can instantly enhance an athlete’s power and speed. This is especially noticeable in team sports, where efficient running mechanics, like proper foot placement, are not always emphasized. Adjusting these aspects can immediately improve an athlete’s efficiency, step length, and running economy.

Regarding frontside mechanics and efficient force application, the rate of force development of the pushing leg is crucial. A stiff base of support in the ankle allows for quicker force application. Following the push phase, the hip flexors must activate immediately for effective leg recovery. This requires a reflexive action through the pelvis and maintaining a balanced length-tension relationship around the obliques and hip flexors.

While gym based exercises for hip flexor strength are useful, real improvements come from coordinating these muscles at appropriate speeds, which is best achieved through ballistic actions. This could include sprinting, bounding, and other dynamic exercises that challenge coordination between the abs, pelvis, and legs.

I also emphasize the importance of high volume sprint drills and tempo runs. When done correctly, athletes not only feel faster and more agile, but they also experience a shift in where they feel delayed onset muscle soreness: from the quads and lower back to the glutes, abs, and calves.

Developing strength in these areas is more than just building muscle through slow strength exercises. It’s about incorporating these qualities into activities closer to the sport, ensuring efficiency and helping athletes understand what effective movement feels like. This approach is far more beneficial than trying to develop these qualities through distant, unrelated activities.

You have visited a lot of team sport organisations all over the world. What are three things that many of them could do differently to develop their athletes’ speed both in and out of the weight room?

The first area of focus is recognizing the universality of fundamental movements across sports. Despite the perceived uniqueness of each sport, the foundational movements remain consistent: acceleration, achieving top speed, backpedaling, side shuffling, crossover stepping, and pivoting. These movements should be the cornerstone of any functional movement screen in sports, allowing coaches to understand and enhance their athletes’ efficiency in these movements.

The key is not just recognizing these movements but understanding what constitutes efficient versus inefficient movement.

With this understanding, coaches can identify how players compensate, and how to effectively cue and create constraints to promote efficient movement. This approach is adaptable across a range of sports, from baseball and basketball to rugby, American football, soccer, and track & field. Observing athletes perform both basic movements and more complex, skill specific movements can reveal asymmetries or limitations that might impact their performance. For example, noticing differences in an athlete’s lateral shuffle can provide insights into their movement efficiency and potential areas for improvement.

My role in these environments often involves distilling my observations into actionable insights. This includes breaking down complex movements to their fundamental elements and helping coaches apply my approach in their unique contexts.

For instance, during a recent engagement with an NFL team, I emphasized that the principles of adaptation, physics, and biomechanics are not unique to my system but are foundational to all sports training. The goal is for each team to internalize these principles and apply them in a manner that respects the specific demands and constraints of their sport.

Another critical aspect is the creation of a shared language across different domains of a sports organization. This shared language bridges the gaps between rehab, sports medicine, strength & conditioning, skill learning, and on field application. A unified approach sees the connections between different aspects of training and performance. By establishing a common language, we can facilitate better analysis, discussion, and collaboration among all members of the sports organization, from players to coaches to medical staff.

Additionally, this approach emphasizes the importance of data and objective analysis in driving discussions and decisions. Rather than relying solely on subjective opinions or biases, the use of data, video analysis, and measurable outcomes helps create a more objective basis for evaluating and enhancing athlete performance.

This objective approach fosters trust among players and coaches, and ensures that the focus remains on tangible improvements.

To enhance the development of athletes’ speed both in and out of the weight room, sports organizations should focus on understanding and refining fundamental movements, applying universal principles of sports science in their specific contexts, creating a shared language across disciplines, and utilizing data driven approaches for objective analysis and decision making.

These strategies not only improve the efficiency and effectiveness of training but also foster a more cohesive and collaborative environment within sports organizations.