http://www.charliefrancis.com/community/showthread.php?p=35717#post35717
http://www.charliefrancis.com/community/showthread.php?t=8483&page=1&pp=15
http://www.charliefrancis.com/community/showthread.php?t=1781&page=1&pp=15
Just a few threads here…
But yet many athletes become faster by becoming stronger. It’s more fruitful to see the role of increased strength within an individual framework and not even try to correlate absolute strength numbers to absolute speed results. When the lens is turned towards the individual, the decision about how much ought to be focused on strength training is so much easier.
The comparison between a single step and a squat (time wise) is irrelevant; if the athlete is stronger, and thus applies more force to the ground, the single step is faster than before. Although the ‘whole’ sprint still takes more than 9.7 seconds no matter what – way more than a single squat.
I agree but I’ll add that the epitome of strength traning is to become stronger without gaining weight.
Would a wide receiver still run as fast if he was 200 lbs instead of 175 kbs???
I dont think so
Yea, I agree that athletes can become faster by becoming stronger but there is a point where strength (weights) should not be the primary goal. Sure, you may get good speed gains from strength initially but the increased strength is only worthwhile to a point! (Zatsiorsky explosive strength deficit)
Why focus on squatting 600 when you’re still likely to get blown away by guys who squat half that??? (Kim Collins, Carl Lewis, Oba, Casey Combest…) It’s sprinting, not powerlifting.
This is what I dont understand either, how come some guys can run world class and not have strong legs???
It may be as much that they’re not strong as that they may not have the technical proficiency to demonstrate that strength in the squat. Also expression of strength varies depending on build and many other factors. It could also be said that the type of structure that favors top running speed is the exact opposite structure that favors big squatting weights. So a 165 lb guy with legs up to his ears with a 300 lb squat might still be able to generate more tension per unit of muscle fiber area then another 165 lb guy with short squatty legs and a 500 lb squat.
One thing I’ve noticed is that the bigger a person is, the bigger their squat will be even relatively to a certain extent. What I mean by that is you can look at the deadlift and see very comparable lifts from people of light weights and smaller builds, but once you make them squat, the weights seem to be a fair amount different in the squat vs. the deadlift, probably due to having to support the weight with a much smaller upper body (of course, people like BJ are the obvious exception).
Wow…excellent point, Kelly!!
I’ll regress later!
Cheers!!
But guess what Kelly, at the end of the day, you, as a sprinter still have to push off your bodyweight ( or greater) to advance yourself!
You have to push off your bodyweight, or equivalent, and to do so at world class times, or your strength doesnt mean (squat) no pun intended)
Not entirely accurate.
Every subject has an optimal power to weight ratio relative to locomoting their body down the track. When this trait is fully realized the subject is sprinting their fastest. For many, the process of realizing this ability comes as a result of increasing cross-sectional diameter. The added bodymass is compensated for by the increased contractile strength of the larger tissues. More force is generated during GCT.
While increases in cross-section are unlikely to aid an already world class sprinter it is exactly this increase in cross-section that may be recorded as sprinters move up the ranks from highschool age to world class.
One of my football players dropped a tenth of a second off of his 40yd dash time ((down to 4.56 hand time) despite an increase in bodymass from 185 to 200lbs.
True, but just to set the record straight, weights are NEVER the primary goal; it must always follow hand in hand with speed development. Nevertheless, improvement in strength is often seen a little before improvement in speed (after unloading). Yet again, it comes down to individual factors.
Apparently Ben had a rather unusual (almost linear) progression with strength – otherwise 2x6x600 would have come a century later – and as it were, his speed improved constantly. So I guess there was a strong correlation between gains in the strength room and the track (but still, weights were supplementing, not the primary objective). Somehow, a positive “snowball effect” took place, strength improved speed and improvements on the track improved work in the weight room. With Carl Lewis, I would imagine, such relationship was never there, hence less focus on strength training (and indeed the right choice for him). I guess, in Carl’s case, it was never even an option.
It’s indeed sprinting, not powerlifting… but let’s not create imaginable barriers to progress; as long as strength improves and has a positive effect on sprinting, why not continue that even thou it eventually leads to 500, 600, 700 pounds… – who cares. If the relationship isn’t there, take a different approach. There are no absolutes, only individual preferences.
I agree with you, strength gains are worthwhile to a point, but the “point” is strictly individual – so walk till you reach that point!
He could be faster or he could be slower. You can’t assume that by adding one lift to anyones training program it will improve their speed. There is a very delicate mix of training components that have to be balanced.
all in all, if everything else were equal for kim collins(his rfd his stride frequancy, his ssc, his start his blah blah) and he had a greater strength to bw ratio(i am sure he has very good one to start with but…) then his stride length and other miscallnious qualities would be improved as would his final prodcut on the clock.
everything else being equal more strength is plus, of course nothing is ever equal.
If it was merely a matter of increasing strength with no drawbacks then squats should be used. But, what if squats made him stiffer than usual and his speed workouts suffered because of it? What if the cns expenditure from squats didn’t allow him to train other elements to optimal means? It’s tough to say what is best.
Weight training is important and we all know why - but we should never forget that it gives you no specific improvement in a specific sport without specific training.
In “my” country for example I know dozens of guys who can squat more than 500 punds, in fact there are thousands of guys who can, but there is not a single guy who can run 100m under 10.30!
But guess what Kelly, at the end of the day, you, as a sprinter still have to push off your bodyweight ( or greater) to advance yourself!
You have to push off your bodyweight, or equivalent, and to do so at world class times, or your strength doesnt mean (squat) no pun intended)
I’m not sure what you’re talking about so let me clarify. Let’s say you and I are both 6 ft tall and weight 175 pounds. You have a 38 inch inseam while I have a 29 inch inseam. I squat 375 lbs you squat 250. You run faster then I do so some idiot says “well that guy’s weaker so strength didn’t do much for him” or some other idiotic comment. Failing to realize that the guy with the longer limbs is much more disadvantaged when it comes to leverages when it comes to squatting, yet can produe more force and more velocity when the joints are at the end ranges of their motion.
WOW - KellyB
“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man (kellyb) is KING!”
Also it may well be that the faster man has better elastic reactive strength which has little to do with long limbs. If what you are suggesting is the case; then Andre Cason, Calvin Smith and M Greene should not have been world class and we should n’t have a reigning 400m hurdles world champion who is about 5ft 7-8 ins tall. How long is a piece of string?
It’s kind of implicit that squats and any heavy lifting might draw away quality from his other trained qualities, just all other things being equal stronger will probably win. Everything is a conditonal if/then statement, Kim Collins and his coach have found what works well for him, its hard to say if it was ultimently the best route to take with his training(in the terms of t&f careers the 29 year old Collins is running out of figurative track to work with). Hard to say just looking back now that Collins seems to be past his prime. FYI Collins also has Asthma. I really like Collins, its just something about him and other atheltes that come from small nations and succed such as Stephane Buckland. Just pointing out a well known fact but while Kim Collins is normal next to normal people he looks like a world class distance runner when you put him next to his peers at the 100m distance
from left to right: Kim Collins, Bernard Williams, Ato Boldon, Maurice Greene and Tim Montgomery. Him and Montgomery are the only two who look like they couldn’t enter an open bodybuilding or powerlifting comp. This is a picture of the much talked about 2001 edmonton race with three false starts and green in at 9.82 and a late starting monty with a 9.85 in the above picture green seems to be holding form well for a man on one leg, and Bernard Willams look’s as if he’s been shot while montgomry appears to be gaining on green.
This is what I dont understand, it doesnt matter how tall or short one is, at the end of the day you are doing what all spinters are doing, which is fighting gravity.
When you push of with your feet you are fighting gravity, which means the stronger you are the quicker you can defeat the force of gravity, hence the faster sprinting times.
This is why most sprinters do squats and other exercises.
so what I dont understand is why some sprinters, whom are weak in leg weight lifting, can still run very fast and post world record times, as opposed to other sprinters who squat 700 lbs and lift weights like crazy (like Ben Johnson).
That was my question.
Cheers 
Perhaps I can clarify, following are a few of the genetic factors which deserve special attention:
- fiber composition/ratio (white to red)
- muscle attachments (a tendon which attaches farther away from the joint it crosses provides a greater mechanical advantage)
- lever lengths
Though there are others, these three are untrainable factors which have monumental impact on speed development (although, through training, fibers may be influenced to act one way or the other the end result is usually solidified long before high competition results are obtained).
Having stated this, now we may consider the taller, long limbed athlete who is faster yet weaker (in the limit sense) then his shorter, slower, yet stronger counterpart.
The taller athlete almost definitely (by process of deduction) possesses a minimum of advantageous muscle attachments and perhaps more white fiber composition. Now if we introduce training we can add superior reactivity/elasticity to the equation and this yields us a Carl Lewis type sub 10s 100m sprinter whose training was largely void of weight training.
In this example I use a taller athlete as an example of superior genetics. Important to realize, however, is that the fiber composition/ratio, attachments, reactivity/elasticity, etc yield an advantage to what ever size sprinter possesses them.
I am confident that an analysis of every sub 10s sprinter would display many similarities at the structural level in terms of fiber composition, favorable attachments, etc.
A close look at world class strength/power/speed development athletes yields a situation in which only an ignorant individual would discount the monumental significance of genetic good fortune.
Ultimately each athlete/coach must find the optimal means of exploiting their highest speed development potential. For some this road will lead to more weight training, for others this leads to more reactive/plyometric training, and the rest is somewhere in between. All the while the regulation of these training protocols will fluctuate based upon a host of other controlable and uncontrolable factors.