Strength is the one adaptation that will have a positive impact on all other aspects of your fitness. Bookmark it, save it, and understand it. This is probably the most misunderstood aspect of training, but today we’re going to clear the air and set the record straight about why strength is never a weakness.

In this article, I’m going to discuss the mechanisms behind strength being a net positive for every single thing on this list. I’ll talk about why it should be your main focus especially early on in your training, and hopefully, you’ll be able to understand why you should be training for strength first.

What is Fitness?

Before we get started let’s take a look at the various adaptations that make up what we call fitness. What are the things what make up what we call fitness?

1. Strength

2. Power

3. Speed

4. Mobility

5. Flexibility

6. Agility

7. Conditioning/Work Capacity

8. Tissue Resiliency

These are the adaptations that make up what we call fitness. No matter what you’re doing in the gym you’re training to get better at one of these things, even if you don’t realize it. From running on a treadmill to getting under a heavy bar and squatting, you’re putting your body through work that is designed to make you better in some way, shape or form.

Next I’m going to discuss the

Strength

This one is pretty obvious. Increases in strength will be beneficial to your strength. Duh.

But what kind of strength are we chasing? Many people will tell you that athletes don’t need to be powerlifters, and while I tend to agree I think it’s kind of short sighted to not chase after some level of maximal strength. When it comes to strength we can break it down into two categories:

• Maximal Strength

  • This would be considered absolute strength. Think of training for the absolute heaviest weight you can lift. Absolute strength doesn’t take into consideration your weight, position, age, etc. When you think of maximal/absolute strength think offensive linemen. Training for maximal strength takes a lot out of someone, and there’s a deminishing cost-benefit ratio as we get stronger. There’s an end to carryover when it comes to strength and sport. We’ll get into that a little bit later.

• Base Level Strength

  • Base level strength is having the requisite strength to be able to perform basic movements on the field of play. Think of being able to control your body on the field through changes of direction, jumping and landing, etc. In the gym, it means being able to control your body throughout the lifts and basic movements. Base levels of strength are incredibly important early on in training.

Why do we make the distinction between the two? Most athletes I deal with lack even a base level of strength. They won’t have enough strength to change direction with ease or be able to control their bodies around turns. When you don’t have this strength, training for speed and power is an exercise in futility. We’ll talk about those next.

Power

Power is work divided by time. Work is defined as force times distance. Therefore, someone powerful is capable of moving a load a certain distance in a short amount of time.

While it often gets used interchangeably with speed, they’re different. Someone can be very fast but unable to produce a lot of power. When you think of power, I want you to think of someone throwing a shotput, while speed would be someone throwing a punch. The difference is the load that is moved and the corresponding speeds of that load (or lack thereof).

Another good comparison would be a sprinter coming out of the blocks versus an offensive lineman coming off the line trying to push through a defensive lineman. The sprinter has no external load to overcome, he is very fast. The offensive lineman has to overcome a great external load with speed, he is very powerful. This comparison is very much in line with the strength-speed vs speed-strength comparison. While very similar, they’re not quite interchangeable.

Someone stronger is capable of producing more force. More force means more power. Power is a direct reflection of strength. Being powerful is incredibly beneficial in every single sport. Increased strength is going to be a prerequisite for becoming more powerful.

Speed

Speed is defined as the rate of change in the position of an object in any direction. In sports, this is one’s ability to move your body in a single direction as fast as possible.

The rate-limiting factor of speed (and acceleration) is how much force you can put into the ground. It’s a little bit deeper than that but force production is the gist of it. A stronger individual is going to be able to put more force into the ground, and thus be able to move quicker than a weaker individual.

Think of it this way:

If you can squat 100 lbs for one rep, you’re capable of putting slightly more than 100 lbs worth of force into the ground (again, it’s a lot deeper than this but this is the gist of it). The reason it’s slightly more than 100 lbs is because you’re actually moving the bar, 100 lbs of force would cause the bar to stay in place. When you go to sprint, you’re putting about this much force into the ground.

Now, if you’re able to add 100 lbs to your squat then you’d be able to put more than 200 lbs of force into the ground. This means you’re able to create significantly more distance with every step. You cover more ground. You’re FASTER.

A stronger athlete is a faster athlete 99% of the time. If you want to get faster, you have to get stronger.

Mobility

This one’s probably going to rattle some of you. Mobility isn’t limited by strength, it is DEFINED by it.

Mobility is defined as the ability of a joint to move actively through a range of motion. One of the many reasons we lack mobility as a society is due to deficits in strength at the end ranges of motion. Increasing strength will lead to a more pain-free movement through a full range of motion.

Your body isn’t going to allow you to get into positions that it doesn’t believe that you can get out of. If you can’t get into the bottom of a squat chances are it isn’t because you aren’t flexible, it’s because you lack the strength to be able to do it!

If you want to increase your mobility, you need to get stronger and you specifically need to get stronger at the end ranges of motion. A stronger athlete is a more mobile athlete.

Flexibility

This is another one that tends to get some pushback but a stronger muscle tends to be a more flexible muscle. Flexibility is defined as the ability of the soft tissue to move passively through a range of motion. So how does strength factor into increases in flexibility?

We have proprioceptors in our muscles that help to detect length and tension. They’re both inhibitory and excitatory and their job is to protect the muscle from damage. One of these proprioceptors is called muscle spindles. Muscle spindles are receptors that detect the length and rate of changes in the length of the muscle and send that information to the brain. When they detect a very fast stretch, they’ll do their job and either tell the brain to lock down so that it won’t overstretch and tear, or it will tell the brain to recruit more muscle fibers to be able to overcome the load.

Strength increases have been shown to work on this inhibitory process of the muscle spindles. A stronger muscle allows the muscle spindles to relax, inhibiting this stretch response of locking down the muscle. If you want to increase your flexibility, on way to do so is to get stronger!

Agility

While many people think of fast feet when they think of agility, fast feet is not agility. Agility is the ability to accelerate, decelerate, and reaccelerate your body. It involves moving your center of mass, and not just your feet.

A lot of coaches will throw kids on an agility ladder or set up a cone obstacle course in an effort to increase their agility. This is often an exercise in futility and their time would be better spent increasing their base levels of strength.

The reason most kids struggle to be agile has nothing to do with slow feet. They lack the ability to be agile because they lack the strength to slow down and speed up quickly while maintaining control of their bodies. We discussed earlier that force production is the rate-limiting factor of speed, and agility goes even further.

Slowing down deals with significantly more force than speeding up does. When we go to change direction we’re often overcoming upwards of 3-5 times our bodyweight, and then having to put enough force into the ground to go the other way with speed all while maintaining control of our body. That’s a lot of force!

Becoming stronger will allow you to deal with these forces more easily. It’s not different from speed from this perspective, but strength is even MORE important when it comes to agility. If you want to become more agile then get your butt in the gym.

Conditioning/Work Capacity

I get a lot of pushback with this one but bear with me. The late and great Charlie Francis said it best:

It doesn’t matter how many times you can repeat an effort if the output isn’t high enough to begin with

What this means is that it doesn’t matter how conditioned you are, if you can’t get to the ball first. Being able to fail at a task a bunch of times without getting tired isn’t conducive to success on the field. Becoming faster (and stronger) is a great way to become more conditioned. I’ll explain:

Let’s say you can bench press 100 lbs. Bench pressing this 100 lbs is incredibly taxing because it’s the most amount of force that you can produce. You get to work in the gym and over the course of a year now you can bench press 200 lbs. What do you think happens to this 100 lb bench press? It gets REALLY easy! You can now bench press 100 lbs for 15-25 reps, whereas before it was all you could muster to get one. What changed?

Your strength in the bench press going up now means this 100 lbs bench press is very submax. It’s now easier to perform this same task and you can do it over and over again, with more speed. Getting stronger has led to you being more conditioned.

A lot of times your “conditioning issue” on the field isn’t a conditioning issue, it’s a strength issue. Getting stronger will allow these tasks to become more submax, leading to the same tasks taking less energy, leading to increased levels of conditioning.

If you want to get more conditioned for sport then spend some time getting stronger. You’ll be surprised at how little extra conditioning you need throughout the season.

Tissue Resiliency/Injury Prevention

This is really the reason we train. Training in the gym is what we call general physical preparedness training. You put yourself through loads in the gym in an effort to prepare yourself for the loads you’ll see on the field of play. You’re preparing your body for the damage you’ll see while playing on the field.

A stronger muscle means stronger tissue, stronger tensile strength, and better control. If you’ve worked to get strong in the gym, chances are when you see those loads (change of direction/landing/slowing down) on the field you’ll be prepared!

It’s not ust the strength of the tissue, but remember strength increases mobility AND flexibility. A more mobile joint coupled with a more flexible muscle with more tensile strength means a lower chance of soft tissue injury. You’ll be able to get into/out of compromising positions because you have the strength, mobility and flexibility to do so!

If you want to remain on the field this season, spend some time getting stronger.

Wrapping This All Up

Strength is never a weakness, it’s science! If you’re looking to increase your speed, power, mobility, flexibility, agility, and conditioning while remaining injury-free then go get to work and increase your strength in the gym!