Dr. Squat - Dr. Fred Hatfield

Simply being able to produce more force, or at least in theory if you are stronger, you have a potential to produce more force. The speed at which you can do this is the most important key to explosiveness

But besides all of the techinical/physiological reasons.

If you want to push a bus faster would you work on your sprints or your squats?

On the other side of that coin, if you wanted to curl a pencil faster, increaseing your bicep curl by 20 lbs. won't help much.

Thanks...you are right, it's how much muscle fibers are recruited per unit of time. I left that out first because some athletes might improve their relative strength (if they are already strong) and don't see any direct transfer anymore (because they can recruit more total motor units but not in a short time time) and thus have to do explosive stuff to "convert" the gained strength into more explosiveness.

Your example of the the bus and the pencil makes alot of sense...the heavier the external resistance, the more important is maximal strength. If there is almost no external resistance you generally don't need alot of max strength....like Verkhoshansky says

This has always interested me how important is limit strength to athletes that do not need to show off their limit strength in their sport. Because some coaches has been obsessed in my opinion with limit strength and they are using a lot of their time improving limit strength and not considering the other important things that their athletes need!

Some people think that you can't increase your limit strength to high level without using barbells/dumbbells. And that is a lie but not all people do know that it is.

There are/were many athletes who haven't trained with barbells/dumbbells and have had great success using just bodyweight/gymnastic movements. Somebody might say they are/were genetically gifted of course they are/were.

But aren't those who train with barbells/dumbbells also genetically gifted?

Someone will say they are/were genetic freaks I would've to disagree with that because there is no such thing when we compare athletes at the top of the same sport because all those who are at the top are genetically gifted.

Athletes and strength athletes are totally different. Some non strength athletes must use lift like squat bench etc because they need very high level of limit strength everywhere in the body. But not all athletes are like that.

Most athletes are looking to be more powerful. Maximum strength will increase the capacity of your ability but you have to use that ability by training the specific kind of strength you need in your athletic event for example explosive strength.

If you are very weak and you have doubled your maximum strength in certain lift it will surely help but it doesn't really mean that you are twice stronger now than before.

I have seen many athletes who are very strong while using their bodyweight but when they get under the barbell or in front of the barbell they can't show their true strength. Barbell/Dumbbell lifting also requires technique and a lot of practice to be proficient at it.

I have seen some athletes using weightlifting apparatus for a year or two but they still didn't express their true strength.

What I like about barbells/dumbbells etc is that you can how much you have improved more easily. The other benefit while using them you can focus purely on improving your limit strength and not stability balance or flexibility.

With bodyweight/gymnastic movements alone you can achieve very high level of limit strength if you are creative enough.

- An improvement in the ability to recruit more units units (intramuscular coordination).

Are there any other reasons? Is the first reason valid?

Plyometric Bench Press Training for More Strength & Power
http://www.strengthcats.com/plyobenchpress.htm

"Power is equal to force multiplied by distance divided by time.

Power = Force x Distance/Time

Since the terms force and strength are often used interchangeably and distance divided by time is the same thing as speed, power can more simply be defined as strength multiplied by speed. Therefore,

Strength x Speed = POWER.

Since strength and speed are components of power, increasing one while neglecting the other limits total power development. Unfortunately, many players focus on strength because they are familiar with this traditional and well-established mode of training. Because strength and speed have a multiplicative impact on power, athletes can make greater gains if they develop both components. For example, if an arbitrary strength score for an athlete was 2, and the athlete's arbitrary speed score also was 2, the hypothetical power rating would be:

2 x 2 = 4

Doubling strength without altering speed would double power:

4 x 2 = 8

If the same athlete made only a 50 percent gain in strength and an equal gain in speed, the power rating would be:

3 x 3 = 9" (Brittenham, 1997)"

Kenny Croxdale

I believe that the official definition of Power is (Work / Time) and it's measured in watts. Work requires the displacement of a Mass by a Force. Techically, if no displacement (motion) takes place during the application of force, then no work has been done and no power generated although there has been energy expenditure.

That's about the depth of my knowledge on the subject though.

Good Lifting!

Vaughn

Edit: Ok, apparently there is angle information relative to the force that also enters into the final calculation such that:

"When a force acts to cause an object to be displaced, three quantities must be known in order to calculate the work. Those three quantities are force, displacement and the angle between the force and the displacement. The work is subsequently calculated as force*displacement*cosine(theta) where theta is the angle between the force and the displacement vectors."

Another thing that I am interested to learn about is why some elite athletes they don't have great limit strength but they are very successful. I don't know if asafa powell or tyson gay have great limit strength but I doubt it because eveybody would be talking about how strong they are.

I get your point Doc but what's the point of this limit strength as a base and how much of this base you need? Because a lot of athletes today don't seem to get enough of increasing their limit strength they want bigger and bigger numbers.

Can somebody explain the illustrations of this article pelase? Because most of them are confusing to me. If anyone have online messenger and is willing to explain can you private message me?

Can someone draw these illustrations using excel?

http://www.drsquat.com/articles/afreshlookatstrength.html

I am sorry for my ignorance I am just trying to learn.

There are elite athletes that haven’t been trained to express high level of limit strength in the gym in lifts like squat bench etc, they can’t squat 400 or even 300pounds for example why these same athletes still have great success if limit strength was as important as it’s made to be today then these athletes should be unsucessful with these who have great amount of limit strength right?

Kenny does doubling your limit strength in certain lift in the gym really doubles your power? It doesn’t. I know your example was hypothetical but why don’t you use a better equation than that equation which in reality doesn’t work? Even for example sake it’s confusing in my opinion.

When someone is trying to improve limit strength he/she don’t care about his/her power as much as an athlete who need to express that strength quickly, so that’s why doubling your strength might not be the answer that you are your looking for.

About the article that you posted Dr.squat advices to use some techniques to avoid declaration in the bench press and other lifts.You can read them through this article and point your opinion so we can learn.

http://www.geocities.com/~slopitch/drsquat/1rocket.htm

strength*speed= power equation is wrong when used in this sense its wrong because we are not taking the time component that you have to express your power in which is different in different sports but always much faster than any thing that happens when you are trying to test limit strength.

If we look at how much the sprinting times have improved since they started to improve their limit strength which I don’t know exactly when but anyway I don’t see a lot of improvement in sprinting in general even many factors have improved like drugs, nutrition, tracks etc.Plus some of these sprinters have increased their limit strength to the levels of elite powerlifters.

Maybe someone could explain why limit strength is so important.

### Not necessarily. Depends on what levels of limit strength they have through whatever training methods they used. Perhaps it was strictily sport specific stuff such as used in gymnastics. Most elite gymnasts spend little to no time in the weight room, yet most male gymnasts can bench 300 lbs. without ever having performed the lift. They've done other things to get strong. Another athlete, may be successful at his sport because he is located at an optimal spot on the force/time curve for that particular sport. Or perhaps his sport does not require high levels of limit strength. Badmitton does require big biceps.

Good point but doesn't gymnasts have greater limit strength than other athletes who doesn't train for limit strength because they must increase their limit strength in order to perform some gymnastic movements that require pretty high limit strength? Aren't gymnasts strong because they play with levearge that's why they have great strength?

I am talking mostly here about athletes who use only their bodyweight to perform their sport and they don't need to express their limit strength in their sports like gymnasts do neither they carry any kind of heavy appartus. I never thought that badminton requires big biceps.

### Kenny's equation is accurate, your not taking other variables into account however. I've used this example a hundred times....You've got an athlete who is quick and fast, jumps high, etc. Great athlete. How do you improve him from a physical standpoint? Plyometrics? They train speed right? Yes. But they will not help him improve. He's practicing what he's already good at. In order to get faster, that athlete would have to improve his strength. An extra 50-100 lbs. on his squat will make all the difference in the world for him. On the other hand you have an athlete who is very strong, in all lifts, yet he isn't very fast, or quick, and his vertical jump isn't high enough to jump up onto two sheets of paper. But he squats 400 lbs. How do you improve him? You have to make him faster via special programming. Plyometrics would likely be an ideal option. Increasing his squat by 50 lbs. wouldn't do much at all

What do you mean improve him from physical stand point? If the athlete is football player increasing his squat by 50-100lbs will surely help him, he won't be brought down so easily but what if he was a sprinter boxer or other kind of athletes why it would help him for sure? Why increasing his limit strength will benefit him? This is the question that I need an answer to.

Strength* Speed = Power I am thinking about strength only as maximum strength. Could you point out Todd what variables that I am missing thank you for your time. Ofcourse I will give it a thought also.

### This begs the question of what type of strength is actually needed? Doc has an article listing the many different types of strength.

Let's say for example I want to improve my starting strength and explosive strength could you explain why I need very high level of limit strength to improve these components? Why is limit strength base for power?

### Well, it works because speed by definition takes time into account. Speed could be defined as distance traveled, or acceleration per unit of time.

Sorry for my wrong choice of word. When I talked about time I meant the time that it takes to achieve maximum force which is around 400millisecond. Dr.Squat calls it Tmax according to my understanding if I am not mistaken? :roll:

FACTOR SIX: The Relationship Between Limit Strength and Fmax
In any sports movement, Tmax is so short that it’s not possible to get all of your motor units turned on. Not even close! Only powerlifting tests one’s limit strength. NO other sport does because of the time constraint.
Former Soviet scientists worshipped the relationship between limit strength and Fmax. And for good cause. They believed that NOTHING should EVER be done to cause an increase in the distance between Fmax and limit strength. They believed that the DEFINITION of a great athlete was one whose Fmax came close to his/her limit strength. They believed that, in all the world of sport, SPEED is king!

What's this relation ship between Fmax and limit strength is?

This is a phenomenal concept, folks! Understand that simply working limit strength is NOT the way for an athlete to become great! In fact it’d slow you down if carried to the extreme. The coaches of yesteryear were right when they wouldn’t allow their players to lift for fear that doing so would foul up their “touch” (skill), make ‘em muscle-bound or slow them down. They were right. The reason is that continually hammering limit strength -- your 1-RM (which was pretty much all that the early ironheads knew how to do) -- will eventually result in muscle being synthesized beyond the point where one’s strength-to-weight ratio is greatest. Added strength, when carried to this extreme, almost invariably means added weight, slower movement speed, inability to achieve positive acceleration or a steep “Q” angle, let alone greater explosive strength.
So, this being the case, we must give consideration to the concept of “functional strength,” or the amount of limit strength necessary to maximize Fmax without causing an increase in the difference between Fmax and limit strength. Simply put, one’s strength-to-weight ratio is very similar to one’s functional strength requirements, and it is generally different from sport-to-sport because the demands of each sport are different. Before you jump all over me for making such a brash statement, let me modify it a bit and acknowledge that in sports such as archery, bowling, curling and other similar activities, the concept of strength-to-weight ratio has far less relevance than it does for (say) shot putters or high jumpers. Or bodybuilders, for that matter, whose chief competition objective is to get massive muscle irrespective of movement efficiency.

So, this being the case, we must give consideration to the concept of “functional strength,” or the amount of limit strength necessary to maximize Fmax without causing an increase in the difference between Fmax and limit strength.

What does this mean?And what is that Q-Angle? Even it's not important to the discussion that we are having but it's still important to learn about these things.

Good point but doesn't gymnasts have greater limit strength than other athletes who doesn't train for limit strength because they must increase their limit strength in order to perform some gymnastic movements that require pretty high limit strength? Aren't gymnasts strong because they play with levearge that's why they have great strength?

### No, they're strong because they push and pull their bodyweight at every conceivable angle and varying degrees of speed.

What do you mean improve him from physical stand point?

### SImply his ability to run faster, jump higher, etc. not his sport knowledge or skills. Those can be improved, via strength work, but indirectly.

If the athlete is football player increasing his squat by 50-100lbs will surely help him, he won't be brought down so easily

### Not necessarily, he potentially will not be brought down as easily, as he can theoretically absorb 50-100 more lbs. of force.

but what if he was a sprinter boxer or other kind of athletes why it would help him for sure? Why increasing his limit strength will benefit him? This is the question that I need an answer to.

### Because it takes less effort to move the weight that needs to be moved be it an implement or one's self. WHy does increasing one's squat allow you to perform more reps with a previous PR? The exact same reason. SAID principle.

Strength* Speed = Power I am thinking about strength only as maximum strength. Could you point out Todd what variables that I am missing thank you for your time. Ofcourse I will give it a thought also.

### They're endless.......look at Doc's article on factors affecting strength.

Let's say for example I want to improve my starting strength and explosive strength could you explain why I need very high level of limit strength to improve these components? Why is limit strength base for power?

### Because all other types of strength are based on it. A degree of it is required to be fast. YOu can be slow and still lift a heavy load, but to lift that heavy load, despite having low speed strength, one's absolute strength is sufficient. You can be fast, but not be able to squat 200 lbs., but you still need/have a degree of limit strength. A pick up truck and a sports car are two different vehicles. Both may have a V8, or even a HEMI, but one will be faster, and one will have more pulling power.

Todd I agree with everything you said except the bodyweight training thing. Some of your points are what I was trying sometimes I lack expressing myself well but there is only one thing that I don't agree about gymnastic are strong because they push and pull at different angles.

I think it's all about resistance and increasing the load(the body is fixed load but you can increase resistance by decreasing leverage which I think is one of the most important reason to their strength but not the only. Another reason that come to my mind the static holds.

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