You could if:
- You produced enough force in your muscles.
- You made yourself much lighter while being able to produce the amount of force you can now.
This is how robots will outrun men. Lighter parts, more force at the joints.
Simple right?
Run this little experiment to experience what I’m saying:
Wave your arm as fast as you can from one side of your body to the other.
Now grab a 5kg weight and do the same...
Do all the technique work you like, but that 5kg is never going to move like an empty hand.
This is the truth.
Athletic development can easily lose track of physics in the search for fractional gains.
It’s not technique that sets the male running world records above the female world records.
It’s relative strength.
The same is true for standing under the basketball ring and jumping .
Either you produce more force from the legs (or weigh less).
Yes the force has to be produced quickly before you leave the ground but it’s still about relative force.
Sure there are gains in technique but once technique is near optimal force is the go to.
If a 60 inch vert or a 7 second 100m was to happen at would be the result of extreme force.
Looking at the extremes like this often reveals the truth.
Relative Strength Is King!
Which can you throw further... a 2kg ball or a 10kg ball?
In sprinting, you are both the ball and the thrower.
We have to optimise the ratio between:
- The size of force producing units - the muscle.
More muscle weight is needed if we’re staying on the ground (not jumping), the distance is short (10m sprinters would be much heavier than vs 400m), the implement is heavy (shot put vs javelin).
If 5m is the key distance, strength is the name of the game.
- The thing to be moved - in sprinting you are the implement!
The heavier the implement, the more strength training will help.
The male Javelin is 800g and its competitors train hard in the gym or they lose.
In throwing events the implement can’t be changed, but in running events it can.
Notice how Usain Bolt’s coach criticised him for being fat in the “I AM BOLT” documentary.
Usain Bolt weighed around 94kg.
Physics tell us that he has extremely strong hip-flexors and short range knee extension. He throws himself down the track and is much heavier than 800g.
For Rugby and Shot-Put, strength training becomes more obviously the decisive factor.
Similarly, high jumpers can’t afford a heavy chassis. Like birds with their hollow bones, jumpers have to be light to fly highest.
- The software that connects the two together - the nervous system.
The implement has to be put to work by the driver, the software. Imagine the world’s best driver in a tractor against an average driver in a sports car... who wins?
The Good News Is... Relative Strength (Tension) Is Highly Trainable.
Bigger, Better Muscles
From the first time someone lifts a weight, they’re likely to have a 300-500% increase in maximal strength.
At 16 I was able to bench press around 30kg (I was skinny and not strong). 150kg is possible.
With every 1kg of lean mass gained, you gain around 3kg of strength capacity. It depends on the lift but the rule holds. That’s why we have weight classes. That’s why anabolics are spoken about so much in sports.
Weight training is a pre-requisite for breaking world-records in all strength and power sports.
Anabolics are a major topic in elite sports because they exaggerate the impact of weight training and increase relative strength.
The athletes with the highest levels of relative strength in the right movements have a huge competitive advantage.
The question for those not interested in anabolics becomes:
How do we create more “puberty like” changes in our athletes?
Strength training is the clear winner for performance enhancement.
There is no close second.
In sports like Rugby, Open Weight-Class Wrestling & American Football, where it’s one human against another high levels of mass are a pre-requisite to play most positions.
Great 12 year-olds will lose to average 18 year olds because they have less muscle.
The best female strength records aren’t likely to pass elite male athletes (without massive chemical enhancement) no matter how great their sports psychology is.
Side Note: Fat Loss = An Unfair Advantage
A weightlifter in the 80kg category with 12% body fat has around 10kg of dead weight. At 6%, the same lifter can take 5kg more muscle onto the platform. That is a huge advantage.
After his weightlifting career, Klokov stated that if he had learned more about bodybuilding, he would have been a significantly better lifter.
This is one reason Chinese weightlifters lifters are training bodybuilding after their weightlifting sessions.
Being shredded is a competitive advantage.
Strength Has To Be Specific
Sometimes people will say “Well then why aren’t the best weightlifting back squatters the fastest 100m runners?”
The main reason is because the back squat is not specific enough. Even though they never run and rarely train light they are still very fast.
The best back squatters do have the best vertical jumps from a deep squat.
That’s what they practice, hence it’s what they’re great at!
So what strength test would count for 100m time prediction?
Predictors Of Speed Performance
Line up 1000 sprinters at an all ages sprinting event and test their maximal force output at different speeds on:
- A Heavy Poliquin / Patrick Step-Up
- A Nordic strength test measuring near straight leg hamstring strength.
- Cable Pull-Ins
Now work out the force output relative to bodyweight.
These would be close to the “Sprinters Total”
Would that be a better predictor of speed than the back squat?
Very likely.
Would it be a better predictor than running technique (which is highly controversial and hard to rate)?
Very likely.
Imagine you’re with a tribe in Africa...
Who runs faster - the 12 year olds with phenomenal technique coached by the world’s best from 10-12 years of age, or the 18 year olds?
(In a tribe you don’t need to worry about obesity and sedentism, we assume they are all humans living according to their genetics. In the modern world, the 18 year old might be worse than the 12 year old after 6 years of modern living.)
In a professional sporting environment, it was my job to give my athletes the qualities that the 18 year olds have.
When 18 year olds play against 12 year olds the 12 year olds get more injuries and lose.
It’s not only the lever lengths that have changed.
It’s the muscles.
Puberty is the winner.
Does This Mean Technique Doesn’t Matter At All?
No.
Of course it does matter.
But how much can you improve the running form of someone who’s been running all their life?
Leading sprint coach Henk Kraaijenhof suggests that we probably won’t or shouldn’t try to change the technique at all.
Dimitri Klokov taught me the same thing... “correct the weaknesses not the technique.”
What we train most when we do speed drills is actually specific strength.
Speed training is tension training.
Drills develop strength for repetitions in the top speed specific positions.
The nordic curl then is part of a continuum of movements that includes straight leg running.
Just like isometric back extension holds through to top speed running.
All these movements deal with creating maximal force or tension, only the speed of contraction is changing.
If you’re not going to practice Nordics, you can get away with straight leg running in a similar way that a dunker might not do any step-up training.
It’s all tension training.
It’s always about relative strength.
After an injury or to avoid injury doing some tension training at slow speeds often increases performance and decreases injury risk.
The Two Key Factors That Influence Speed
Usain Bolt with his shoe laces tied together would lose to any other running athlete.
Point?
There is a point at which technique becomes limiting.
Range of motion and specific position strength are the most important factors in great technique.
- Add strength where it’s required.
- Remove limitations in range of motion and joint tension.
What Is The Third Key Factor?
Put the 5kg down.
Take the weight vest off.
Removing dead weight.
Muscles are the units of acceleration and deceleration. Every performance has an optimal amount of muscle.
Tendons potentiate the transmission of force into the bones. Tendons can grow and change qualities as they develop.
Fat weighs us down.
World class 100m runners stop being world class before reaching 15% body fat.
When maximal muscle or momentum are required, higher body fat percentages are possible. But there is a point where it’s no longer possible to produce enough force.
You can have the best tendons.
The best CNS firing.
The best technique.
And yet...
No Muscle Ability = No Results.
A great bonus is that as slow force production potential improves, the chances of breaking muscles and connective tissues decreases. This happens because the tissues have a surplus in the amount of tension they can tolerate.
Charles Poliquin is the most winning strength coach in history. He was an expert in adding muscle and stripping fat off his athletes faster than any other coach.
"All speed starts with overcoming resistance" Louis Simmons.
Louis Simmons is the most well known powerlifting coach because his lifters handled the most weight and his methods worked for other strength coaches in other sports.
Ben Patrick rebuilt his body building relative strength joint by joint. He not only returned to playing but also started dunking for the first time in his life. Coaches and athletes around the world are testifying to ATG not only replacing injuries with ability but also delivering new levels of athleticism.
Think force first.
Comment in ATG For Coaches:
Fundamentally, athleticism comes from the ability to produce and reverse force. ATG is the best training system I've seen.
Most of the transfer to sport will come from simply doing the sport.
Imagine a weak 8 year old child... you can have them run and jump and whatever as much as you like but what will turn them into a beast athlete is getting strong as they become an adult.
The 12 year old 100m record holder will never beat the 18 year old 100m record holder.
Great athletic development makes the 12 year old more like the 18 year old. That is done primarily through strength training.
Expressing qualities that are developed in the gym is important but provides fractional rewards compared to turning the boy into a man.
The same process is true for men. Turn them into more athletic men.
I find the age example helps people understand that strength is the king quality.
The reason men's world records are better than female world records isn't because of technique. It's because of strength qualities.
This approach has served me well.
"All speed starts with overcoming resistance" Louis Simmons.
The problem is that body is too heavy to move faster relative to the ability to produce the force to move it.
If the body was half as heavy it would move much faster.
We throw a 4kg ball further than an 8kg ball.
Relative strength is the challenge to make the body very light compared to our ability to move it...
In the end the CMJ / Hop tests / 5m sprints/ Power snatch were used to show me that my strength program was working. They weren't the best ways to develop those qualities. After the first few weeks of learning, the physics have to change.
Using the snatch example. If someone squats 40kg for 1 (the 12 year old) then snatching 40kg is going to be very tough. Once they squat 140kg (the 18 year old) then 40kg is going to be a paper weight.
I'd love to hear what makes sense from this... Ben's approach to speed and athleticism is by far the best I've seen. Hence why I'm here and why he's dunking from all angles.
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