We have to get them strong for them to be able to run faster.
“All athletes need strength & sprint training intelligently dosed year round, but generally speaking:
Lower Training Age = Higher Emphasis on Strength Training.
Higher Training Age = Higher Emphasis on Sprint Training.
Get strong to run fast.
Run fast to stay strong.”
-Ray Zingler on X
If a 23-year-old athlete with 10 years of weight training experience, who squats 405 for reps, reached out to me looking for training to improve sport performance, I’ll tell you what I am not going to do: Try to increase his squat strength, further.
If the parent of a 13-year-old with 0 years of weight training experience, who just mastered the art of tying his shoes, reaches out to me looking for training to improve sport performance, I’ll tell you what I am not going to do: Feed him more of what he is already doing too much of (sport specifics).
Strength & Speed training, while fairly simple to program and prescribe to any athlete on the spectrum does require some awareness and fundamental understanding of the human body and how it functions/responds to training stimuluses.
You’ll often hear me say “strength training IS (the best) speed training for the youth athlete.” And it 100% is.
The reason it is, is because most youth athletes lack a relative base of strength, so as you get them stronger, they earn the opportunity to generate more force that can then be applied to enhance running speeds, agility, velocity, punching power, you name it.
Now this doesn’t mean we ignore actual sprint training all together, not in the slightest. Athletes regardless of age still need to do what athletes do, but to sit here and sell out on “speed & agility” training as we know it at the expense of getting kids stronger? That is quite literally theft from their development.
As kids get older and their relative strength levels increase, the strength/speed prescription continuum does shift more towards a “sprint/speed” emphasized model, over “getting their weight room numbers up higher”, but again this does not mean we ignore weight training all together, we just prioritize a sprinting stimulus a bit higher on the totem pole.
You’ll often hear, “well my kid needs to focus on speed training” because “he’s already strong enough”.. and I can promise you the parents (dads, lol) who say this have inflated perceptions of their child’s athleticism and are dead wrong.
Very few humans on earth will not benefit from the ability to generate more force (improving strength levels), especially kids.
Don’t let these snake oil salesmen fool you.
