Debate: Strength is King

This statement angers so many people doesn't it? Speed is king right?? "Speed Kills" except it literally doesn't. Speed catches. Speed evades. STRENGTH KILLS. Imagine your house cat catches a lion, now what? Your house cat doesn't have the strength to do anything. You create speed from the strength you have. People have turned this debate into straw man arguments and IMO using bad faith arguments misrepresenting basic fundamentals.

Here are the common arguments I heard in regards to the statement "Strength is King"

+ If strength were king powerlifters would be the fastest athletes

+ Too much strength will make athletes slower

+ Most of the weight room warriors ride the bench

+ Athlete 1 squats more than athlete 2 and athlete 2 runs faster.

Most of the arguments favored speed or power being king. Click HERE to view the tweet. Before we break this down I want to start by listing what IS NOT Strength.

STRENGTH IS NOT THE WEIGHT ROOM OR AN EXERCISE. STRENGTH IS NOT A MEASUREMENT RATHER EXPRESSION.

The key is establishing what strength is and creating context of the tweet.

This article will outline:

1. Strength Defined

2. Strength Assess

3. Strength Trained

Strength Defined: The ability to generate and or accept/resist force appropriately

Force= Mass x Acceleration (F=MA). If we focus on force, we quickly can eliminate the argument that too much strength would make an athlete slower. It's not possible to increase force output and get slower. Bigger, faster, stronger. If you get bigger and slower, thats not strength's fault because strength is not size. Part of the equation is literally acceleration. The other side to this debate was positions. And I heard a lot of back and forth about technique being more important etc.

"Technique is literally a force multiplier. Without force, there is nothing to multiply"- Coach Fahey (Click HERE to see the tweet)

I work with a lot youth and high school athletes. We obviously work on both technique and strength. On a wall, sure I can teach and put them in good positions. But when we start speeding things up forget about it they melt. The reason they can't hold or maintain positions is they simply aren't strong enough to do it. So when we think about F=MA what is M??? Depends what sport you play and that leads us to assessing strength.

Strength Assessed: Sport specific ability to generate and or accept/resist force appropriately.

I heard a lot of arguments comparing powerlifters to running backs arguing that a powerlifter is stronger and if strength were king, they would be faster. It's a weak argument because it purposely ignores body weight to power ratio, it ignores height differences, foot size, limb length etc. But most of all it ignores the fact that each sport has its own unique skills and demands.

You mean the short stocky guy squats more but runs slower than the tall lean kid? And you honestly don't understand why that is??? I think people do understand it and they purposely ignore it to support their emotions and bias.

Assessing strength is sport specific. Olympic sprinters by definition are all strong. You can't run fast without producing the force needed to move fast and having the rigidity and stiffness in the right places for the forces to transfer into sprint speed. Yes technique plays a big part. A baseball player can display strength through rotational power at bat, or through arm velocity on the mound. Yes skills such as kinetic linking and hand eye coordination come into play but it's the nature of the sport. That's part of why you can't really compare the powerlifter and the running back, they both practice different skills.

Lifting weights doesn't make you slower

Not sprinting is what makes you slower, and guess who doesn't sprint??? A powerlifter, so let's put that argument to rest.

Remember strength is not the weight room or an exercise it is simply a physical ability to express or generate force by accelerating a mass as fast as they can specific to their sport. For most field athletes you can also assess strength in change of direction (COD). I posted my preferred method to test COD HERE. 5-0-5 is a much less technical test to use that the 5-10-5. We want to eliminate variables, technique and skill in this example is much less than the 5-10-5. Many don't know this, but the 5-10-5 is a very technical test. You learn the technique to improve your time and not so much get faster. Anytime we can reduce variables, the reliability of the test goes up so we can better assess strength or ability to accept and create force. Overall, for field athletes, we can all agree that relative strength is very important. If we can't transfer the weight room to the field what's it matter? Did you know pull ups have been shown to be highly correlated with sprint speed? Do you think it's about the pull up? Or about your body weight to power ratio and the ability to move your body weight? It is clear and undeniable to increase relative strength you need to increase absolute strength. How you increase absolute strength is your choice but that is the concept.

Strength Trained: Resistance Training and Plyometrics

We have defined strength, established how to assess strength and now how to train or increase strength. The obvious answer is the weight room. A lot of people argued that athletes that squat the most don't run the fastest and jump the highest. Thats because strength is not an exercise or measurement. We use exercises to increase strength or the ability to generate/accept forces. Each exercise in the weight room in itself is a completely separate skill. Lebron James is Lebron on the court but he's Charlie Brown in the weight room. We all are also operating with different body weights, levers and levels of proficiency. It would be a better comparison to compare an athletes sprint speed and jump height as it correlates to his or her performance increases in the weight room but not athlete to athlete. Too many variables. The reason we goto the weight room is to use the tools to increase strength or increase our ability to express/generate and accept/resist forces. I included plyometrics for one simple reason, it's our bridge from weight room to field of play. It marries the concept of increasing absolute strength as well as relative strength and rate of force development. Proper way to increase strength is to surf the curve. Move various loads at various speeds. Again how you do that is your business.

If peak power is generated from 30-80% what happens if you increase someone's 100%?? You increase their power output. The equation is Power= Work/Time. If you raise the ceiling, you raise everything including the floor. Maximal or absolute strength is your ceiling. Increase it and appropriately develop rate of force development and you get a better athlete assuming sport skill at least remains the same.

If lifting weights makes you less athletic

You weren't athletic in the first place

Look what happened to the guys in the steroid era who added strength on top of the skill they already had. They were literally super soldiers and it was the most exciting times in baseball. Not advocating for steroids, but I am pointing out what happens with you add strength and size to skill.

Strength is the foundation, everything is built ON TOP of your ability to generate and or accept/resist force. Don't just take my word for it, look at this pyramid from Eric Cressey.

It's all important, but no one is putting speed at the bottom for their foundation. Speed needs strength to exist. Speed is great, no hate but let's not pretend anymore. Strength is king, strength kills end of debate.

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