Turning Strength Into Performance on the Track and Field

Strength Is the Foundation, Not the Finish Line

In our last newsletter, we looked at pre-season readiness and how training gradually becomes more specific as competition approaches.

For many athletes, the previous training phase has included a significant focus on developing strength and physical capacity. But as we move closer to competition, the question starts to change.

It is no longer simply: "How strong can I become?"

It becomes: "How effectively can I use that strength in my event?"

That transition is an important part of performance development.

Strength Creates Potential

Strength provides athletes with the capacity to produce force. That matters across virtually every athletics event.

Sprinters need to apply large forces into the ground during acceleration and at maximal velocity. Jumpers need to absorb and redirect forces rapidly during take-off. Throwers need to generate and transfer force through the entire body into the implement. Distance athletes need sufficient strength and stiffness to repeatedly produce and manage force efficiently.

But having the capacity to produce force doesn't automatically mean an athlete can use it effectively. A bigger squat doesn't automatically produce a faster 100m. A heavier deadlift doesn't automatically result in a longer jump. And adding strength in the gym doesn't guarantee a longer throw.

Strength gives us potential. Performance depends on how we express it.

The Importance of Time

Athletics presents an interesting challenge. Athletes often have very little time to produce force.

During sprinting, jumping and throwing, many important sporting actions occur in fractions of a second. This changes the question from simply: "How much force can you produce?" to: "How much force can you produce in the time available?"

This is where qualities such as power, reactive strength, rate of force development, coordination and technical efficiency become increasingly important.

As athletes progress towards competition, training therefore needs to gradually expose them to faster and more specific expressions of force.

Building the Bridge

Think of strength as increasing the size of your engine. That bigger engine gives you greater potential. But it still needs to be connected to the wheels.

For an athlete, that connection is built through sprinting, jumping, throwing, plyometrics, medicine-ball work and other high-velocity activities that increasingly resemble the demands of their event.

This is why physical preparation and technical training should never exist completely independently. The gym develops physical qualities. The track and field environment teaches athletes how to express those qualities. The challenge for coaches and athletes is building the bridge between the two.

Specificity Matters

As competition approaches, training should increasingly reflect the demands of the event.

For a sprinter, this may mean greater exposure to acceleration and maximal velocity alongside appropriate strength and power work. For a jumper, strength developed in the gym needs to contribute to increasingly fast and reactive take-offs. For a thrower, general strength and power need to be integrated with the sequencing, rhythm and speed required to accelerate the implement. For a distance athlete, strength needs to support running economy, robustness and the ability to maintain efficient mechanics under fatigue.

The closer we move towards competition, the more important these event-specific expressions become.

The Gym Should Support the Event

This is an important shift in thinking.

Success in the gym can be motivating. Seeing your squat increase or hitting a new personal best is tangible evidence that you are improving. But athletes need to remember what they are ultimately training for.

Charlie Francis famously emphasised this within sprint development: strength training should complement the primary speed program, not replace it. The same principle applies across athletics.

There may even come a point where chasing further strength improvements creates additional fatigue without providing enough benefit to performance. At that point, the role of the gym changes. Instead of constantly chasing more, the objective may become maintaining strength while allowing more energy to be directed towards high-quality event-specific training.

What Might This Look Like in Training?

Imagine a sprinter who has spent several months improving lower-body strength.

Earlier in the preparation, the emphasis may have been on exercises such as squats, split squats, Romanian deadlifts and other general strength work. As competition approaches, those exercises may remain within the program, but their role begins to change.

Training might increasingly include explosive jumps, bounds, resisted accelerations and high-quality sprinting. Gym volume may reduce while movement velocity and event-specific intensity increase.

The strength hasn't disappeared. It is being expressed differently.

The same progression occurs across jumps and throws. Build the capacity. Then learn to express it.

More Isn't Always Better

One of the challenges for developing athletes is understanding that progress doesn't always mean adding more.

More weight. More exercises. More sets. More training.

At some point, adding more can interfere with the quality of the work that matters most. If a heavy gym session consistently compromises sprint quality, jumping quality or throwing quality, the program may need to change.

The question should therefore not simply be: "Can I do more?" It should be: "Is this helping me perform better?"

That is an important shift from training to performance.

Individualisation Matters

The relationship between strength and performance is different for every athlete.

One athlete may still benefit significantly from becoming stronger. Another may already possess excellent strength but need to improve how quickly they express it. Someone else may have excellent power but struggle to transfer that capacity into their event because of technical limitations.

This is why testing and monitoring can be useful. Strength measures, jumps, sprint splits, throws and other performance measures help coaches build a picture of the athlete rather than focusing on one number in isolation.

The goal isn't to create the strongest athlete in the gym. It is to develop the physical qualities that athlete needs to perform their event.

The Centre of Excellence Approach

Within the NSW Athletics Centre of Excellence, we view strength and conditioning as one component of a much larger performance system.

Strength development, speed, power, movement quality, technical preparation, recovery and athlete wellbeing all need to work together. As athletes progress through the pathway, physical preparation should evolve alongside them — shifting from building general capacity to expressing it with increasing speed, precision and specificity as competition approaches.

Final Thought

Strength will always matter. But strength on its own isn't the goal.

The real skill lies in knowing when to keep building capacity, and when to start asking an athlete to use what they already have — faster, more explosively, and closer to the exact demands of their event.

Build the engine. Then build the bridge to the track and field.

That is the shift from training to performance.