How gym strength transfers to the track

This comes up a lot, so I wanted to get into it today. Some people can power clean and squat a lot more than others and still not run as fast as them.

I think a lot of that comes down to how the strength gets applied when you run. I'm not going to go into how to program gym sessions here, just how to look at them, yours or your athletes', in terms of what they do for sprinting.

The way I'd do that is to put a squat or a clean next to a sprint and compare what the body is doing in each. There are three differences I'd pick out.

The first is direction. In a squat or a clean, you push down into the floor and your body moves straight up.

When you accelerate, you lean forward and push the ground back behind you. The shorter the race, the more your time depends on how hard you can push back like that.

Athletes who can't push back hard enough tend to stand up too early out of the blocks. They come up to keep their balance, which means their drive phase ends earlier than it should.

Being strong pushing up doesn't automatically make you strong pushing back. Powerlifters are a good example. On average they push back less hard when they accelerate than volleyball players of a similar bodyweight.

Top speed is a bit different. You're upright by then, and most of the force goes down into the ground rather than back.

Faster runners hit the ground harder for their bodyweight than slower ones do. They don't swing their legs through the air any faster.

So on direction alone, top speed is closer to a squat than acceleration is, which is one reason I wouldn't write heavy squats off for sprinters. At top speed, I think the bigger gaps are the other two differences.

The second is that you sprint on one leg at a time. In a squat you've got both feet on the floor, and as long as you like to get set before you move.

When you sprint, you land on one foot from the air, with your whole body moving over that foot at speed. Even single-leg lifts in the gym, like a split squat, start from standing still.

If your hip drops or your ankle collapses as you land, that can limit how much of your strength actually gets into the ground. The same goes for bending at the waist.

I don't think you can sort that out just by getting your squat up, because you're never in that position when you squat.

The third difference is time. I went into this in more detail in May, in the Build fast strength edition, so I'll keep it short here.

A heavy squat can take well over a second to come up. When you sprint, each foot is on the ground for about a quarter of a second or less, and the faster you run, the shorter that gets.

So what matters is how much force you can get into the ground in that time, which isn't the same as how much you can produce with as long as you need.

Across all three, what counts is force relative to your bodyweight. If an athlete put on five kilos to add twenty to their squat, they might be no faster for it, because they'd have five more kilos to move with every stride.

If you're judging gym work, I'd treat the numbers on the bar as a check that you're getting stronger, not as the goal. If you also compete in weightlifting or powerlifting, the number matters for its own sake.

How much to chase those numbers depends on how long you've been lifting. If you're fairly new to it, getting stronger in almost any way tends to help, so I wouldn't overthink it at that stage.

For experienced athletes it's different. Pushing maximal strength past a certain point can start to cost some of the power and springiness they need to sprint.

Lifting makes you stronger and more powerful, but sprinting is where you practise using that at sprint speed. That's why I'd always put sprinting first and fit the gym around it. Sprinting is the session you want to be fresh for.

For the gym work that's there for sprinting, I'd want to know which of the three differences each part helps with. Bounds and jumps for distance have you pushing horizontally.

Sled pulls and hill sprints have you pushing back as well, but while you're actually sprinting. They may do more for that than ordinary strength training, but it isn't settled, so I'd do some of both rather than pick one.

Single-leg work is for the one-leg difference, and with that I'd pay as much attention to whether the hip and ankle hold their position as to the weight on the bar.

Light, fast explosive lifts, jumps and med ball throws go with the time difference, because the point of them is producing force quickly.

I'd keep heavy squats and cleans in for general strength. I see that as the base, and the rest of the work as ways of practising using it in positions and at speeds closer to sprinting.

Then I'd judge all of it by times on the track. If the lifts keep going up and the times stay flat, I'd take that as a sign the strength isn't carrying over, and I don't think more weight on the bar is the answer.

That's when I'd go back through the three differences and look for the one the gym work isn't covering.