Why Strength Training is a Dead End
Part 4: Strength or technique?
Ook beschikbaar in het Nederlands
“… for me Feyenoord possessed the ideal mix between strength and technical football. Everything fell in place in this team.” — Theo van Duivenbode
The above quote strikingly illustrates the way many regard sports and movement in general. On the one hand we have a strength component and on the other hand a technique component. If an athlete excels in one of these two, he or she can get pretty far, but in order to be the best you have to be strong both physically and technically. “That’s logical”, to put in the words of a legendary Dutch football (i.e. the kind that you actually play with your feet) player.
But is that really logical? You probably felt this one coming already: I don’t think so. In this — somewhat philosophical — episode, I’ll try to reason that force production and technique are inseparable and — here comes the blasphemy — that it makes no sense to try to improve them separately. Enjoy the ride!
FYI: This article was originally written Dutch and some of the original terms don’t have a true English equivalent. For instance, in football the term ‘shotkracht’ is often used. The literal translation would be ‘shot strength’, but the accepted term is of course ‘shot power’. Even more noteworthy is the fact that in Dutch there are no distinct words for force (as a Newtonian phenomenon) and strength (as a biomotor ability). There is only ‘kracht’.
This linguistic insight allows us to get a better feel for the very common and misleading habit of using force and strength interchangeably. And this in turn, allows us to better appreciate the fact that our ideas are never a Platonic reality but rather shaped by things such as the nuances of our native language. Therefore I’ve opted to go with the literal, non-accepted translations for the remainder of this article.
Folk language or reality?
Let us stick with football for a bit. An elite football player has to be both strong and technical. But what exactly do we mean by “strong” here? If you pursue this question in practice, it usually comes down to a player having to be good in close quarters situations, a.k.a. ‘dueling strength’. ‘Jumping strength’ is often mentioned as well. Now I don’t mind the message being conveyed here; it seems to me that it would be very useful for a player to be able to conquer/shield the ball well and to jump higher than his or her opponents.
I do mind the terminology being used here however, and especially the mode of thinking that it reflects. Make no mistake: this isn’t just a semantic matter. I say this because in practice this mode of thinking often leads to — what I consider — useless or at the very least far from efficient training sessions.
Let us take dueling strength as an example. Nearly everyone will agree that the ability to conquer a ball isn’t just a matter of ‘raw strength’ but also of dexterity/anticipation/etc. These are things that usually won’t be filed under ‘strength’ but rather under ‘technique’, ‘coordination’ or whatever. Something similar holds true for jumping strength. I’ve schematically represented this linguistic regression in the figure below.
Just asking some basic questions thus already shows us that the strength-technique dichotomy is far from clear cut. Being ‘strong’ at something in folk language actually just means being good at something. This sort of language is fine at the bar, but puts us on the wrong foot when trying to get a solid grasp on reality. Pro tip: use your brains and take nothing for granted.
Applying strength?
I may have said that this wasn’t going to be just about semantics, but it’s rather looking like it so far! After all, if you take a random action or movement, you can still dissect it into (at least) a strength and a technique component; just look at ‘dueling strength’ and ‘jumping strength’. Distinct strength and technique training sessions thus still seem to merit their places.
In my view this divide is untenable as well though. We can follow different avenues to elaborate on this, but let’s try to stay close to what happens in practice. Practitioners often talk about ‘applying strength’. For good movement, muscular strength alone is not enough; you also have to be able to use it effectively. Strength training is to improve the first, technique training to improve the latter.
But let us take a look at what usually happens in practice. The time when sport-specific strength training was dominated by simple isolation exercises has been over for years. We do squats instead of leg extensions, pull-ups instead of biceps curls, etc. In short, we work in kinetic chains. Why? Because this is more ‘functional’: the exercises are more similar to the movements that we are ultimately interested in (running, jumping, pushing, pulling, etc.).
This has been a positive development for sure, but it already indicates that we’ve noticed that training for ‘pure’ muscular strength usually isn’t very helpful or perhaps not even possible at all (more on this in part 3). Apparently there is another component that we (nearly) always have to take into account: movement patterns. And this comes eerily close to ‘technique’ and I think that this is actually used synonymously in many cases. Thus even in strength training itself we do not seem able to truly separate strength and movement patterns/technique.
Applying strength??
We can go a step further with this. Suppose a sprinter aspires to become faster (duh!). Therefore he decides to do some heavy squats apart from his sprint training. This seems to work, because his times are improving a bit. Hurray! Getting stronger helps after all! But wait a second. If you want to improve your squat, you’ll also have to improve your technique. Back to the sprinter: did he become faster because of better ‘squatting strength’ or because of better ‘squatting technique’ (or both)?
I think that also within a squat it’s nonsensical to divide performance into a strength and a technique component. As I’ve reasoned in part 2, every exercise (including squats) are first and foremost just movements. And — somewhat roughly put — the force that you exert on the environment with a movement is the result of a specific coordination of muscles with certain structural properties. And let fate have it that ‘coordination’ in folk terms often equals technique.
Hence, strength is the result of coordination/technique and not a component of movement that stands brotherly by its side. Because they’re beautiful (and hopefully clarifying), a few words on coordination (1):
“Whenever a motor task is to be executed, the central nervous system sends impulse volleys to a number of muscles. The muscular forces developed in response to the impulse volleys interact with the mechanical demands of the task, and movement results. Coordination may be defined as the concerted action of the muscles in producing the movement. As such, it is ultimately determined by timing, sequencing and amplitude of muscle activation.”
Applying strength???
From a mechanical point of view, ‘applying strength’ is dubious as well. That is because force is a vector: it doesn’t just have a magnitude but also a direction. Nevertheless force is often approached as a scalar. As such you’re supposedly able to ‘channel’ strength into something just like you would energy.
For instance, in sprinting it’s very important that an athlete directs his push-off force as much horizontally as possible (2). Therefore you might imagine that the athlete should train — on the one hand — to be able to produce more force and — on the other hand — to learn directing this force more horizontally. But does directing this force not require another force? And what force is then required to direct the latter force, etc., etc.? Or is it perhaps all just magical?
Even though it’s possible to pull apart the magnitude and direction components of force in our minds, in reality these two never manifest separately. If you want to change the direction of the force that you exert on the environment, you’ll have to employ a different coordination; there isn’t a simple reservoir that you can tap from. Therefore exercises in which the direction of the desired force (relative to the orientation of the body) is taken into account seem better for transfer of training (3).
Finally, we have examined the strength-technique dichotomy mainly from a strength perspective, but viewed from the other side it’s problematic as well. The body isn’t interested in isolated technique or movement patterns; the forces that are in play are crucial (4). Why do you think that dryland swimming isn’t exactly all the rage anymore?
There’s a ‘but’ coming up…
At first glance, the figure below seems to contradict my story: for good movement both strength and motor control are required (5). Motor control is often used interchangeably with coordination/technique (whether this is correct or not is besides the point). If you read the article, you’ll find that authors refer to “local tissue adaptation” or “muscle architecture” when using strength. Structural properties, in other words.
If for instance there is a tear in your achilles tendon, it certainly seems prudent to me to address this. But this isn’t sufficient for good and pain free movement, because the control of (the recovered) muscles and tendons has to be adequate as well. In other words, this figure actually aligns with my story very well! The choice to make use of the term ‘strength’ is just somewhat confusing here.
Cogito ergo sum
“I think, therefore I am”, according to René Descartes (1569–1650). Huh? For heaven’s sake, what does this have to do with the subject at hand?! Just a moment, please. This thought was the starting point of a wondrous train of thought, from which Descartes concluded that man exists of mind and body. At the same time we experience a certain unity however, so there has to be interaction between the two.
But how is this possible if mind and body are in essence independent of one another? Descartes didn’t have a very satisfying answer to this. Gilbert Ryle (1900–1976) on the other hand, was much more convincing: when we talk about mind and body, we in fact refer to the same entity but viewed through a different lens (6).
The error to think that mind and body are truly different, Ryle dubbed a category error. Now it’s besides the point whether he was right or not in these mind-body affairs, but the concept of the category error is important for our story. This in my experience is one of the most commonly committed logical errors, certainly in sports. And I believe that the dichotomy between strength and technique reflects such an error.
To get a bit more feel for category errors, some examples work wonders. First, a simple one: ‘this table is made of wood and molecules’. Nonsense of course. I’ll leave the rest to Mr. Ryle:
- “A foreigner watching his first game of cricket learns what are the functions of the bowlers, the batsmen, the fielders, the umpires and the scorers. He then says ‘But there is no one left on the field to contribute the famous element of team-spirit. I see who does the bowling, the batting and the wicketkeeping; but I do not see whose role it is to exercise esprit de corps.’”
- “… a purchaser may say that he bought a left-hand glove and a right-hand glove, but not that he bought a left-hand glove, a right-hand glove and a pair of gloves.”
- “`She came home in a flood of tears and a sedan chair’ is a well-known joke based on the absurdity of conjoining terms of different types.”
Jolly buffoonery. Earlier I already tried to show that force production is in fact the result of coordination/technique or whatever you want to call it. Hence, strength and technique do not belong to the same categorical level. Therefore it’s just as nonsensical to state that movements consist of strength and technique components as it is to state that a table is made of wood and molecules. So when I read that it isn’t just strength that is important, but also “the ability to use this strength through coordinated body movements” (7) or “skill” (8), I think to myself “category error!” And sometimes: “Ghost in the machine!”
Thus, it is of no use to try to improve force production and technique independent of each other and then expect them to magically merge to good movements. Human performance isn’t a simple summation of isolated components; that’s not how complex systems work. “I’m not just sure, I’m HIV-positive.”
Conclusion
Strength and technique are in fact two sides of the same coin; they cannot be trained separately from each other. But then does this mean that we should only perform one type of training? Most certainly not. A certain degree of variation is essential for long-term athletic development (9) and this is where — in my view — the art of good coaching resides for most part.
I don’t think that the difference between different types of training is fundamental in nature however: all types of training should ultimately be aimed at improving sport-specific actions. Organisational and logistic factors will determine the differences for most part. Admittedly, there are a number of alternative considerations that have merits (see part 7), but these in essence are only accessory.
Progressive strength coaches have seen this for quite some time already and are steadily working more movement-based. The boundaries are fading: whether strength or technique coach, we should all learn to speak the language of movement.
Practical pointers
- Are you a strength coach? Aim for adaptations that enhance the quality of sport-specific actions.
- Are you a technique coach? Aim for adaptations that enhance the quality of sport-specific actions.
- Investigate the marriage between specificity and variation. Can variation be specific in itself? Hint: yes. And is 100% specificity always possible and desirable? Hint: no.
- Communicate closely with everyone in the coaching staff; you’re all part of the same ‘movement project’.
References
- Bobbert, M. F. & van Ingen Schenau, G. J. Coordination in vertical jumping. J. Biomech.21,249–262 (1988).
- Morin, J. B., Edouard, P. & Samozino, P. Technical ability of force application as a determinant factor of sprint performance. Med. Sci. Sports Exercise43, 1680–1688 (2011).
- Gonzalo-Skok, O. et al. Eccentric-Overload Training in Team-Sport Functional Performance: Constant Bilateral Vertical Versus Variable Unilateral Multidirectional Movements. Int. J. Sports Physiol. Perform. 12, 951–958 (2017).
- van Ingen Schenau, G. J., Boots, P. J. M., de Groot, G., Snackers, R. J. & van Woensel, W. W. L. M. The constrained control of force and position in multi-joint movements. Neuroscience46, 197–207 (1992).
- Rio, E. et al. Tendon neuroplastic training: changing the way we think about tendon rehabilitation: a narrative review. Br. J. Sports Med.50, 209–215 (2015).
- Ryle, G. in 334 (University of Chicago Press, 1949).
- Suchomel, T. J., Nimphius, S. & Stone, M. H. The Importance of Muscular Strength in Athletic Performance. Sports Med.46, 1419–1449 (2016).
- Siff, M. C. Supertraining. (2003).
- Kiely, J. Periodization paradigms in the 21st century: evidence-led or tradition-driven? Int. J. Sports Physiol. Perform.7, 242–250 (2012).
