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How strong do you need to be for sport?

mikeparabellumcoac

Now, this is a very open ended question with a few considerations. Especially when you consider the demands of sport at a physical, cardio-vascular and reaction-based level.


Lets break each of these down to analysis where strength comes into play and also, why we need to care at all?


Now 99% of team sports require some level of physicality, where often short degrees of power as output through either a 50/50, protecting the ball or actually getting into a sprint.


(Let's think of Basketball, Football (English and American) and Rugby within this bracket).


Strength is the ability to exert force against a resistance.

Power is the ability to exert force rapidly.


Essentially this is saying the ability to produce power is built out of strength as a foundation/building block as shown over a force velocity curve, as seen below.


Force Velocity Curve
Force Velocity Curve

Now, why is this important?


It wouldn't be much of a curve without a good foundational strength or starting block. It also means that anything where it comes to moving weight quickly would be a very small weight relative to the curve.


An example of this comes as a deadlift working into a Barbell Clean.


You play as an outfielder in football. Your weight is 75kg playing against players 75-80kg. If your maximal strength for a deadlift is 50kg, your going to likely get muscled off the ball a lot. And if you want to apply this quickly where we would essentially use percentages of that maximal strength, we could only be playing with 20kg.


However, a player that can master that Bodyweight and increase to 120 through a trap bar deadlift (less stressful movement and easier to master), the ability to move 60-75kg quickly becomes a lot more relevant for us on the pitch.


We would use this same logic across the board with lifts, movement patterns and sports.


Other variations would look into the ability to apply force. So the ability to jump as a defender or forward within a starting strength position of 120kg deadlift means we can likely produce a lot more force to jump a lot higher.


The big debate that comes with sports and athletes is the idea that lifting weights makes you slow.


Whilst the logic can be seen, lifting weights isnt just going for 1 rep maxs 24/7. It is finding spaces within an adequate program where you train across that entire spectrum of that curve to build yourself into an all round athlete. Your not a power lifter, you need to be able to do it all. So we would naturally not put as much pressure on developing our strength super quick. We would look at the element of periodisation within training like linear or block programming relative to where you are in the season.


This is what creates the difference between going to the gym and following a program!



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Personal Trainer | Health Performance Coach

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Mike Ellis
Parabellum Coaching
Apex Gym, Stoke-on-Trent
Email: mike_parabellumcoaching@gmail.com
Mobile: 07539276189

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