Firstly I am not a sprinter and secondly I know that to see if a sprinter is faster than get them to run their distance and see if they are faster however if you were to do some gym tests which would correlate to track speed what would you test and why? This may seem a pointless thread, if that is ones opinion then please just don’t comment but I’m intrigued to see what is an indication of how fast one can run.
I would test the following five lifts:
Pull ups, both a 3RM and max reps. People who are good at pull ups are usually not fat and not weak and it is a test of relative strength and the higher ones relative strength the faster they should run.
Incline barbell press, upper body push that is similar to the angle of sprinting. Do a 3RM.
Front squat 3RM to test leg strength.
And a 5RM hip thrust, I know a 65ish kg sprinter who can hip thrust 200kg and needless to say he is fast as fuck… all the sprinters I’ve seen move weight in the hip thrust are normally fast as fuck!
I’d then do a 2RM in the power snatch.
Pointless thread is pointless but I’d just be interested to hear from you guys on what you think would make good indicators for speed athletes!
@WhiteFlash, why flat bench over an incline bench? Front squat is the best squat to go ATG and you can’t really cheat, you lean forward and you’ll drop the bar. And out of interest why high catch power cleans over power snatches?
@JFG, I know what you mean, tis a horse before cart thing. I was just wondering what people would test in a gym to measure progress and performance. And wouldn’t being tight resulting in poor front squat performance be an incentive to work on flexibility? Yeah, any athlete would be on a program and this need to get the stronger and faster I was wondering what lifts you’d use to measure if a program had worked. Like grip strength and pull up numbers are a good indicator for grappling sports, of course they need to be technically sound but they make a good predictor for performance.
Again, you are looking at it wrong. Grip strength is nothing if your shoulders are weak. You must look at where you are to figure out how to improve. And saying “You must front squat 225lbx5” is, well, wrong way to look at things. Are there certain things you must look at? Of course, but that is to weed out the people that are not there.
A regular occurrence in a try-outs, is seeing two guys, almost identical in pre elimination. Once we got them on the track, one guy was a full second faster…Now, here is the kicker. The slower guy kept his speed, the faster guy lost a second or two after the 3rd race.
if the fastest sprinter in the world was always slower at the gun, what good is his speed?
i would never use lifts to measure the program. I use a program to get the athlete where he wants to go. Example. If his hamstrings are too strong in comparison to his quads, I would bring up his quads. Once in balance, I start to work for even progress.
[quote]Brendan1996 wrote: @WhiteFlash, why flat bench over an incline bench? Front squat is the best squat to go ATG and you can’t really cheat, you lean forward and you’ll drop the bar. And out of interest why high catch power cleans over power snatches?[/quote]
Provided the athlete(s) is healthy there’s less learning curve. For all of the hundreds of articles on bench technique at the end of the day you just lay down and press. Same with the squat. Step back and sit between your knees. Everyone always hoots’n’hollers about the snatch, but I personally think the high catch clean is a better move. Less technical, easier on the shoulders and when done correctly (catching with the fingers not wrists, not kicking the feet out wide to handle more weight and eliminating triple extension) it’s about the truest expression of explosiveness that can be done in a weightroom.
If you look at the NFL combine all the guys that run 4.4 or better usually have 36 inch vertical jumps or better and broad jump at least 10 feet. They also usually bench 225 at least 15 times, and they are moving the bar fast.
So, if you improve your vert, improve your broad jump and the bar speed on your bench press is improving you are most likely getting faster.
gym numbers don’t mean a lot as far as speed is concerned - sprinting times do
choose your main movement patterns you want to improve and do that - you don’t have to actually test them
so if squats need to be in there then try:
month 1 - front squat
month 2 - back squat
month 2 - front squat
week 1 - 5 rep max leaving 3 - 4 reps in the tank
week 2 - 4 rep max leaving 2 - 3 reps in the tank
week 3 - 3 rep max leaving 1 rep in the tank
week 4 - deload
add some back off sets if you want more vol
make sure you continue to sprint to monitor if the squats are working for you…if you’re getting faster then keep them in…if you’re getting slower then you need to re address things (do they need high force or high velocity? etc)
For gym testing I would be looking at a 1RM on the Bulgarian squat, simple reason being that sprint involves unilateral force production and while the back squat does correlate to 40m sprint times it does not show any asymmetries observed between legs. To test reactive power I would be recording single leg depth jump height - this will provide an indication of the relative force production that the athlete can generate once overcoming the eccentric load during ground contact. Once again being unilateral it would give an indication of asymmetry.
To get the most out of these tests it would be ideal to use something like a gym aware to assess the load-velocity profile during the Bulgarians and a force plate for testing ground contact time and force production during the depth jump.
[quote]belligerent wrote:
There is no gym exercise that correlates with sprint times.[/quote]
Usually if someone can increase their deadlift/squat relative to their bodyweight they will see more acceleration off the blocks, however speed maintenance is another story.