Max Strength Isn’t Everything
Yuri Verkhoshansky might have said it best in Special Strength Manual for Coaches when he said that “The sport training process represents the artificially reproduced process of the organism’s adaptation to intense muscular activity”. In this article, we are going to expand on what this means, and how it relates to the use of the barbell in training athletes.
Now slap some 45’s together, and let’s get ready to dissect the use of max strength in athletic development!
Dr. V’s statement means that “training” is often using “un-natural” means to provoke a desired response in performance. For athletes seeking improvements in, say sprinting, anything “unnatural” to sprinting would be means such as strength and barbell work, running distances significantly more or less than race distance, doing pushups or pullups, medicine ball throws, or anything else that doesn’t actually represent sprinting one’s actual competitive race.
Why do anything else than the event you are training for?
A fundamental question with training anything might be: “why do anything else than the event you are training for?” Why would an athlete running the 100m dash do anything other than run all out 100’s with maximal rest for each practice? Why would an athlete aiming to jump higher do anything aside from all out jumping on a regular basis? Why would a shot putter do anything else, aside from throwing the shot put?
The Answer:
Other methods of exercise, provoke adaptations in the body that improve the quality of the nervous system or muscles in a manner that the athlete was unable to through specific skill or event training alone. Basically, training teaches the nervous system to do something it wasn’t able to do before. It gives the engine of the body a new “part” to use to put together better performance.
For example, doing hill sprints to increase sprint speed can increase the contribution of the posterior chain, improve hip hyperextension, and build knee drive beyond what an athlete’s nervous system can figure out on its own. Let’s take a look at how performing barbell back squatting can improve performance in a skill such as a standing vertical jumping, and the potential positive adaptations that can happen outside of that found in specific practice.
Barbell Back-Squatting
Improves:
- Improved wiring of the central nervous system towards longer periods of force application
- Improved posture
- Improved intermuscular coordination
- Ability to potentiate the nervous system for up to several days
- Improved muscle strength and size in the prime movers
- Improved muscle-tendon stiffness against deformity
- Increased testosterone and growth hormone release
Of all these adaptations, the first four are the ones with the greatest initial contribution to jumping higher, while the last 3 are important for later, long term training adaptations as an athlete moves through training. Of the 6 factors above, some athletes are already at a high level of functioning in respect to jumping, so squatting won’t have as big of an impact on their leap as it might for others. As with everything, there are always negatives to consider as well.
Barbell Back-Squatting
Drawbacks:
- Reduction of the ability of the athlete to direct force towards the big toe
- Reduction of the ability of the athlete to fully extend the foot in jumping
- Can build slow twitch muscle beyond the optimal ratio for performance
- Can wire the nervous system towards that of retaining force rather than rapid release
- Decreases elasticity through creating a high resting muscle tone (stiffness/elasticity tradeoff)
- Takes training adaptation reserves away from other training stimuli
- Can create soreness that interferes with other types of training
- Creates a negative transfer to other aspects of training once one’s genetic limit is approached
When training a barbell exercise such as squats, athletes improve quickly because of the positives, but the negatives start to slowly accumulate over time given enough focus to the exercise. The existing problem is that athletes tend to look at the initial positives of squatting/barbell work due to the quick improvement, and sometimes decide that they must voraciously follow the trail of barbell squatting (or some other associated lift) to its maximal level in order to continue to improve. The problem is that this couldn’t be farther from the truth for ultimate athletic development.
Figure 1: Medium-term effects of training with the primary focus (over 60%) on barbell training means to improve vertical jump
Looking at the chart above, you’ll see that focusing on barbell training works great on vertical jump for a few months, mostly due to the neural adaptations that happen. After a while, aside from a plateauing effect, excessive “max strength phase” work will bring about negatives that override the positives and cause delayed or backwards progress. How long an athlete will reap explosive benefits from a block of max-strength focused training are going to depends on the force demands of their event, their experience with strength training (newbies will gain for far longer) as well as their own build and response to heavy lifting. Some athletes respond very well to heavy lifting, however, and will defend its use to the ends of the earth, but even these athletes are often training with many other means aside from heavy lifting, as well as a good dose of specific work. These athletes are also often the football/powerlifter type, and are almost never the track and field type.
Training for anything (sprinting, jumping, etc.) is a steady diet of specific training to that movement (so actually sprinting or jumping a lot), and then a battery of other training means that can “artificially” create other adaptations that will assist the final result (barbell work, hill sprints, plyometrics, etc.). Strength training is a means of artificially producing the desired training effect, but the problem occurs when coaches and athletes make two mistakes with its use:
- They think that because some of it is good (see initial useful adaptations), more is better (see negative adaptations).
- They don’t look at the long term adaptations of lifting in respect to the total program.
- They don’t realize that taking a relatively low-speed skill to an extremely high level can take away from high-speed skills of similar mechanics.
Utilizing barbell training
Before I get any farther, know this:
99% of athletes are going to benefit from utilizing barbell training to improve in their sport, regardless of what that sport is. Despite some of the negatives of “over-lifting”, a lot of athletes don’t reach that point (many of them thanks to smart coaches). For a concrete example of just how awesome lifting can be for athletic performance, aside from the millions of case studies across the globe, let’s take a look at the history of throwing in track and field, pre and post lifting era’s, taken from the track and field “Omnibook”, a great reference for track and field workouts, and history. Where we do need to be a bit more careful with the place of heavy barbell work is in specialized performance. Let’s take a look at how the barbell has changed the world of track and field throws over the decades.
Throwing and Strength History: 1930-Present
Track and field throws era 1930-1948
No strength training era. Shot Put WR: 57’1”
Before strength training caught on for athletes, movement and technique was king. This is great for being a ballerina in the ring, but without added force behind the shot, distances will always suffer.
Track and field throws era 1948-1967
Heavy strength training era. (Strength training over 50% of total training program). Shot Put WR: 67’10” (+10 feet!)
When weight training for shot put caught on, it really caught on, and dominated the training programs of those athletes. It certainly helped things, boosting the world record by 10 feet. Clearly even without strength training, we probably could have expected the record to at least move over 60 in this time, but there is no doubt of the role that strength played in increasing performance across the board. Just pushing up one’s maxes to their limit aren’t necessarily the optimal way to do things though, as we’ll see in the next grouping.
Track and field throws era 1970 to present*
Balanced strength training era. (Balanced program between throws/strength/special strength/etc.) 75’10” (+8 feet!) *Steroid era
Although heavy weight training was a fantastic add-on to throwing, a balanced plan (along with some chemical help) of strength, throw volume, biomechanical perfection, and innovative speed-strength work proved to be superior to simply chasing numbers in the weight room. Sponsorships for elite athletes didn’t hurt either! Looking at Thomas Fahey’s strength guide on what it takes to be an elite discus thrower, athletes must be able to at minimum: Bench 400, Squat 450, Snatch 250 and Clean 300. These numbers certainly aren’t great, and numbers for shot putters are going to be a bit higher, but the key is that once these numbers are achieved (and this isn’t too hard for the genetically gifted) speed and technique is far more important than dragging a few lifts into an elite range.
Coach and thrower Dan John tells a great story of his squat max when he threw his collegiate discus PR of 190 feet; he never squatted over 400lbs when he accomplished that. Years later, he strained and wrenched his max back squat up to 605lb… and threw 181. In the following seasons, he decided to focus on lighter squats and bar speed, as well as a generous dose of sprinting and threw 184 three years later, and felt much better about his throwing. Bottom line, lifting heavy is nice, but taking it too far brings around adaptations that aren’t so useful for athletes.
Continuing to look at the training of elite athletes, there is another concept we can look at in regards to reaching highest athletic performance.
Speed and technique
Lifting programs of many track and field athletes is/was a joke, and they still break world records:
Take a walk back in time to the 1980’s and 1990’s, or even now, and take a look at the strength programs of some of the elite athletes…. and try not to laugh. In high school, I remember watching a video of the owner of the long jump world record holder Mike Powell pounding out leg presses, leg extensions and leg curls; a program of which the modern strength coach would not approve! You would think with the “advances” in strength training, his record wouldn’t have stood for 20+ years thus far! Many of us have seen Usain Bolt lifting, and his program would get laughed out of the gym in many NCAA and professional settings. Despite the simplicity, lack of weight, ground based movement, technique, and apparent “lack of transfer” of many of the exercises, these athletes still set world records. Why?
The main reason is that once an athlete is elite, it isn’t how big their squat or clean is that determines their success; it is their speed and technique. Heavy barbell training is great for getting 80-90% of athletes through the levels of novice to intermediate to advanced athlete, but some athletes are so genetically gifted, they don’t need barbell training to induce the artificial adaptations to jump levels. Just training powerfully on the track, the runway or the jump apron combined with basic supportive general work is enough to get this caliber of athlete to an elite level.
Movement and speed is king
As Charlie Francis has said, and as I have talked about in past articles, “no athlete has broken 10 seconds in the 100m dash on a specific strength program”. In a sense, brief, lousy strength programs can be useful to elite athletes because they don’t steal the adaptation away from the specific sprint pathways that need to be developed. Also, looking at another successful long jumper, Carl Lewis; Carl hated weights and only lifted them the last 3 years of his career…. which happened to be his worst 3 seasons. Bottom line, with elite level athletes, movement and speed is king; and strength is a compliment.
Application to Sports Training
Through this, I’m not saying to not care about lifting; that would be foolish. What I am saying is that focusing ones training so far on bringing up lift maxes throws an athlete out of balance. For some athletes, focusing training so hard on lifting is counterproductive, even to lifting performance. I have gotten plenty of online clientele and NCAA athletes very strong using lighter weights in the 50-80% range, and with a premium on explosiveness in both lifting and jump/sprint/explosive medicine ball performance. Athletes live to move fast, so it makes sense to build into their natural strength of speed. Speed is the ultimate remedy for the athlete, and it makes all other qualities much better, including lifting! Always remember to train in balance, and know that because a little of something is good, more isn’t always better.
This leads us to part II of this series, which is the primary differences between lifting for maximal strength, and lifting for optimal strength for sport. The difference between these two has cost me 4” of performance between various track and field seasons of jumping in my own experience, and also made me slower than molasses on various occasions. Doing it right, however, has made me faster than I ever thought I could become, got me over 7’ in high jump in college, got me multiple jump and explosive test PR’s in my mid-20s, and even got me a great squat to bodyweight ratio when I wasn’t truly pushing for it.
Knowing how to program strength complementarily to sport makes all the difference. Stay tuned.
References
Doherty, Ken. Track and Field Omnibook. 5th ed. Los Altos: Tafnews, 2007. Print.
John, Dan, and Pavel Tsatsouline. Easy Strength: How to Get a Lot Stronger than Your Competition – and Dominate in Your Sport. New York, NY: Dragon Door Publications, 2011. Print.
Free Training Guides!
Sign up for the newsletter, get your FREE eBooks, and receive weekly updates on cutting edge training information that will help take your knowledge of athletic performance to a new level.