At what point is max. strength improvement not neccesary?

[system]

@WhiteLightning

I don’t think anybody is advocating “too much” max strength work for the sprinter. This seems to be getting recycled now. Obviously a 6"5" natural long tendon freakish sprinter like Bolt is going to be different than other sprinters. Bit of an assumption but it seems to be true that a lot of athletes (basketball players and sprinters from my experience) don’t really care or put that much effort in the weight room, it is just supplemental work.

Also, I would figure that improving strength levels could help drive power. Sprinters do a lot of plyos, rate of force development, increasing max voluntary force could be beneficial. Olympic lifts…those are really hard to learn, take some time. The training efficiency could be an issue. Squats aren’t that hard to learn. Also, I think there is a huge difference from doing slow multiple heavy singles vs. a few sets of 5-6 with good bar speed. If you look at most sprinters, they obviously have very well developed upper legs (quads, hams) and very powerful glutes. Their absolute strength is probably pretty high but it doesn’t mean it reflects it in the weight room nor do they really care to. Plus, factors like lifting, motivation, (lol) and movement efficiency come into play.

Not all sprinters have poor depth in the squat! btw

You are making FAR too many assumptions, most of which are completely incorrect or too general to be of any use to anybody. I know of two examples of athletes with drastically different profiles than Bolt who were quite amazing in their own right without ever achieving the strength levels you are talking about despite the fact that they did significant amounts of lifting. People who follow D3 probably know who I’m talking about, but a 5’3-4" 170lbs (not a typo) white guy with short tendons ran 10.30 and another white guy (5’7-8", mid 170s) ran 10.2high. Both achieved these performances with lifts that would fall below your assumptions and they certainly had better “lifting” builds than they had “sprinting” builds. The first guy did reach just over >2x BW in the squat, though did a good amount of lifting and trained for bobsled for a period (changing the circumstances) and the other did not come close to 2x bw in the squat, despite lifting hard for years.