But strength is the quality that holds the keys to speed’s potential.
“The quality I care about most in athletics is speed.
Speed wins.
But in order to improve speed, you have to have the capacity to train it.
You have to have access to higher levels of force to be able to express it.
Bluntly, strength holds the key’s to your speed’s potential.”
-Ray Zingler on X
The name of my company is Zingler Strength & Speed.
But despite the speed term being “secondary” it’s the athletic quality that I care about most.
Speed wins. Period.
They typically don’t interview the guys who bench press the most in post-game interviews, they typically interview the fastest guys who created the most opportunities for their team to win the game.
But the reason my company is called Zingler Strength & Speed and not Zingler Speed & Strength is because despite speed being the “holy grail” quality…
Speed costs something to be able to access heightened levels of it.
Speed requires capacity to be able to train it.
Think of having to buy a specific book for the mere opportunity to be able to study a specific topic. You can want to know about the specific topic all you want, but if the only available resource is through “that book” you must buy the book to gain access.
And when it comes to developing speed, strength is what holds the keys to your speeds potential.
A lot of people miss this concept, and they miss it by 100 miles.
“Well, well if that was the case the world’s strongest men would also be the fastest sprinters.”
“Have Brian Shaw and Usain Bolt run a 100m race and tell me who wins!”
You see the second we here “strength is the most important quality” we go right to thinking about 300-pound bald guys straining like crazy, squatting 900 pounds, slowly.
This is not at all what I am implying and squatting 900 pounds, or any other arbitrary number has nothing to do with speed development.
The (inarguable) point that I am making is that to sprint faster, we must produce more force into the ground more effectively.
And to be able to do this, we must develop the capacity to generate more force. This is done by getting (relatively) stronger.
You can then use your newly found strength (force capacity) to train and enhance running speed.
As an example, generally speaking, if you currently squat 200 pounds and build your squat to 300 pounds, you will have gained applicable access to heightened levels of force, that if trained properly from a speed development standpoint (sprinting) will translate to faster running speeds.
