In a post on Joel Jamieson’s 8 Weeks Out Blog coach Rob Paraniello raises an excellent question: How Much Strength Do Athletes Need?
Another way of saying this is – how much strength is enough?!
Coach P mentions the dominance of maximal-effort lifts in modern strength training, and gives a couple of personal stories about the “how much is enough” question:
Coach Parker and I then reminded each other of an incident that occurred during my years with working him at the old New York Giants stadium. At that time both he and I were also studying with a former Soviet Weightlifter and Soviet Coach, Gregorio Goldstein.
On this particular day, Coach Goldstein was also at Giants Stadium, where a Giant football player, David Megget had just easily squatted 427 pounds at a body weight of 178 pounds. When asking Coach Goldstein how to make Megget stronger he replied, “You don’t have to make him any stronger, you have to make him faster”. This comment had a profound effect on each of us to this day.
In a very recent discussion with another renowned Hall of Fame Strength Coach Al Vermeil, regarding a professional baseball player that I am presently training, I posed the question that I am often asked during the rehabilitation and/or performance training of an athlete, “How much strength is enough?”
How much strength does this professional athlete need to successfully play baseball at a consistent optimum level over a long season? This topic of conversation with these, and other legendary strength and conditioning professionals has enhanced my appreciation of this subject matter.
This is a critical question in general, I think.
Coach P goes into a lot of detail explaining different aspects of this question – for instance, the need for different levels of absolute strength depends on the specific sport demand – but I didn’t feel like he really got to the bottom line with his discussion.
Since Aaron Schwenzfeier and I were discussing this exact question this morning, I’d like to add some thoughts to the question, and provide my own answer.
One of the things I said to Aaron this morning was that I regret that the vast stores of data from Soviet and other Eastern Bloc sport-centers hasn’t been mined. The Soviets kept detailed records on every aspect of their athletes’ performance and training throughout entire careers.
In other words, there are detailed records of everything from diet, psychological status, strength programming and measures, sleep, etc., for hundreds if not thousands of athletes in various sport centers in the old Eastern Bloc and Russia.
In his article on coach Anatoliy Bondarchuk, thrower Martin Bingisser notes that the coach:
…does not find a significant correlation between any weight room exercises beyond 55 meters. The bench press is the one exception as it has a significant correlation for throwers until they reach 60 meters. Similarly, in the hammer throw, the correlations with weight room exercises are insignificant past 70 meters.
In an interview with Dane Miller of Garage Strength, Bondarchuk says:
Benching 150k at 8-10meter/second is much better than benching 250k at 1-2 meter/second. Slow, maximal training has virtually no transfer to the throw.
At what point should a shot/disc/hammer athlete stop training maximum strength?
Bondarchuk: A good measure for shot and discus is around a 160k bench, 200k squat, and 150k clean. The discus throwers could incline a bit more for development of the shoulders. At the average level, every exercise is good. Once the shot putter hits 19, 20 –22, the exercises and transfer need to have a much higher correlation.
Backward Causality
I frequently get the feeling that much if not all of what we’re doing in the strength-training and movement-training world these days is actually completely BACKWARDS.
For instance, most of the set/rep schemes we see are based on observed set/rep parameters used by people who have achieved certain outcomes.
That is, the person achieves a certain outcome, we find it desirable, and then we say to ourselves, selves, how did they get there?
We ask them, or dig back into their training logs, and find out exactly what they did to run so fast or lift so much or get so muscular.
Then we create a “training program.” The rationale is – do exactly what they did, and you’ll achieve those results.
Does it work?
Maybe 50% of the time.
The rest of the time it burns people out, alienates them, or otherwise doesn’t work at all…
Not only that, but then you find people with radically divergent “training programs” who have achieved similar results, or people with no “training program” at all who achieve spectacular results (for instance, check out the “training program” of a Tarahumara runner…there isn’t one).
Why?
Mostly because training comes from the soul of the individual.
The best training arises from the depths of the soul. It drives the person. It’s all they can do at that point to steer or guide that drive.
The “training program” becomes whatever is available at hand to train with. Whatever works, works.
Our training programs (for professional athletes, amateurs, and the lay-person who just wants to get fit) are dominated by a “bigger, faster, stronger” mentality driven by a numbers-oriented (OCD) cultural bearing.
Bodybuilding, Powerlifting, and Olympic lifting programs (with the goal of “ever-bigger, -faster, -stronger”) become de rigueur training methods – not because they’re appropriate for the athlete or individual, but because they’re easiest to track…you can “prove results” from them.
Meanwhile, the good movers, with their spirits bursting out of their eyes, who train with passion and…JOY?!…continue to “shock” people when they “come out of the blue” with “incredible” performances or results.
The numbers game is a simple one. Strength training at its best is simple.
Finding that inner fire, holding it close, and fanning it into a raging blaze…those are skills too often forgot, too often discounted.
And the fire of many athletes is extinguished in the vacuum created under the laboratory-glass of “athletic strength training programs.”