The vast majority of athletes aren’t strong enough to earn the speed they are trying to sell you.
“People love to talk about the over prioritization of strength as if it’s a real problem.
Dramatically <1% of people are ‘too strong’.
The problem is balances approaches of strength & speed (sprint) training don’t gain you as many followers on twitter.
All or none zealots <.”
-Ray Zingler on X
In the late 90’s and early 2000’s when STRENGTH & conditioning was really starting to take off and become a widely recognized practice in most athletic performance enhancement realms, admittedly the focus was placed upon strength.
It was power cleans, squats, bench presses, and overhead presses galore.
It was a number chasing game where damn near every major school in the country had leader boards for the top squats, presses, and cleans.
If you were born before 2000, you remember the coveted thousand pound club t-shirts we we’re all after in high school.
“Conditioning” was mile runs, 300’s, 110s, and gassers.
And “speed training” was quick foot drills and sprints in a fatigued state. In other words, NOT speed training.
And then a little bit after 2010 or so, STRENGTH lost its zeal.
At this point, we’d been prioritizing it for 20+ years.
The pendulum started shifting towards speed development.
Tech was becoming easier to come by and we started to be able to easily test sprint times, jumps, & etc.
And this birthed the “anti” strength crowd in the, this is best part, strength & conditioning industry. ‘Merica.
Bro’s from coast to coast on twitter loved to tell you about how we’ve “overprioritized strength” and “strength has points of diminishing return” and that “strength isn’t the be all end all.”
And the reason they took these stances is so that they could “stand out” on the internet to sell you a speed program.
While I don’t believe in over prioritizing any singular component of athletic performance, and strength (in EXTREMELY RARE cases) does have a point of diminishing return, and I will be the first to tell you that strength is not the be all end all..
Herein lies the problem with these massive pendulum shift stances.
We wall off MOST athletes from reaching their potential.
14 College Football players in 2004 squatted over 600 pounds and it didn’t make them elite football players?
So, tell 14-year-old’s that strength isn’t that important and they should focus on speed?
Speed that without high levels of relative strength doesn’t exist?
Be wary of all or none zealots, like most things in life, the sweet spot is found in the middle of craftfully blended synergistic components.
