“Louie Simmons (of Westside Barbell fame) has said, show me someone who is fast and I will make them strong.”
Not trying to be argumentative here, but my reply to that is so what? someone who is fast, and not strong probably has a high fast twitch fiber make-up and a wired nervous system. A lot of things will work for someone like that. This is something you see at the collegiate football level. All the kids get the same, crappy weight training program: bench, power clean and half squat or some varation of, and the kids with so-so speed get worse. The kids who are naturally fast do well on the same program, despite all of its limitations. I am not knocking the westside system, it works for pure powerlifters, but that comment is misleading.
What you’re referring to is the caber toss. This throw was chosen as the best predictor of general athletic ability by the physical education systems of all of the Germanic countries. My own tests verified this concept with sports as varied as luge, volleyball, sprinting, and judo. I even know of a study in which it correlated strongly with the ability to learn windsurfing skills.
The test involves throwing balls of three different weights backward and measuring the shape of the curve of the testing results. Depending on the age and level of qualification of the athlete, the weight of the balls will vary, but they’re always spread apart evenly. For example:
Theoretically, you would throw the two-pound ball further than the four-pound ball, and the four-pound ball further than the six-pound ball.
One national team hired me to help trim off the fat of their budgets. They wanted to know exactly which athletes had the most potential and, consequently, in which ones should they invest their time and money.
The first test that I administered was the caber test. It turns out that many of their senior national team females had no distinct differences in distances between the different loads. These same athletes, despite having improved their strength dramatically, couldn’t show improvement on their track start times. If you score poorly on this test, your athletic potential is rather limited. Therefore, we saved the government plenty of money and allowed them to devote resources to younger athletes who eventually turned out to be Junior World Cup medals winners.
I think you’ve got something there, as far as nervous speed v. athletic speed. I know a guy who learned everything in juggling very quickly and kept getting better. Unreal talent, with very quick perception and very fast, graceful hands. I assumed he would have been a great athlete, but he said no, that he just wasn’t good at sports. His body type was more couch potato than athlete(of any type) so yeah, I can see how someone could have slowish muscles and fast reflexes.