RFD Training > Maximal Strength Training

I’ve watched and observed countless times how people and athletes who don’t focus on what their max strength is completely shock those weight room people and obliterate athletes who focus only on strength. Max strength is great, but RFD and Power are more important to athletic success because they have a bigger effect on what impulse/acceleration is generated during movement. I am not saying there is no Max Strength work in my weightroom activities for athletes, it more important to me with new athletes I engage with, but by focusing on power (speed of movement) a coach creates high force and high velocity movements. While strength only works on improving high force movements with no respect to velocity or time dependency.

Someone who takes at least 3s to lift a 600lb squat likely doesn’t have the functional strength to squat 400lbs x 3 in less than 6s time. However someone who squats 480lbs in less than 2s likely can squat 400lbs x 3 in less than a 6s timeframe. That’s a huge difference between the 2 athletes. In my observation people who are working max strength have a more limited transference of force application to different skills because their force generation has no time dependency and speed of movement is only variable because of force generating capabilities.

In my experience the main benefit (maybe only) of max strength work is neurological with summation of forces and thus very important earlier in development for about 4-6 weeks and needed only from time to time as needed on an individual basis possibly worked once or twice in a macrocycle or about 6-8 times a mesocycle which excludes testing days is sufficient to ensure max strength is improving throughout a mesocycle. In many training programs they are either almost totally max strength based or you work on max strength first and then as the season wears on it is displaced with power. I don’t see much benefit in either unless in the first instance you are a powerlifter. The ability to produce a greater impulse by applying a force for a longer time improves muscular endurance, but doesn’t improve the functional strength required to apply an effective impulse at an effective power to complete work during movement.

Also, Davan and I are the ones who see more eye to eye on this subject than yourself and Davan which is why I proposed the question to him. Although we may see more eye to eye it doesn’t mean we believe the same things.