Hard to Kill Programming Methodology: Part 2 - Strength/Speed

Strength-speed training bridges the gap between raw strength and explosive power. It’s a critical part of our Hard to Kill programming methodology, balancing performance with longevity to make you harder to kill today and in the years to come. This post dives into the concept of strength-speed, explaining what it is, why it matters, and how to implement it in your training.

What is Strength-Speed?

Strength-speed refers to the ability to produce high levels of force quickly under heavy loads. It occupies the middle ground on the strength continuum, connecting maximal strength to explosive power. While the focus remains on force, speed begins to play a significant role in this phase.

Key Characteristics of Strength-Speed:

• Moderate to heavy loads: Typically 70–85% of your one-rep max.
• Controlled, explosive movement: Emphasis on speed without sacrificing form.
• Force-dominant: Prioritizes force production while incorporating speed.

This training improves power by enabling you to move heavy loads faster, which can break through strength plateaus and build functional, dynamic strength for real-life scenarios.

Why Train Strength-Speed?

Strength-speed training builds power, helping athletes move beyond plateaus and develop greater functional strength. While raw strength and hypertrophy are valuable, they are not always practical in dynamic, real-world conditions. Strength-speed improves your ability to exert force quickly, mimicking activities such as carrying heavy loads, shoveling, or reacting to sudden events.

Benefits of Strength-Speed Training:

1. Unlocks Strength Plateaus: Power is often the missing link when progress stalls. Developing strength-speed can improve your ability to generate force and lift heavier weights.
2. Functional and Dynamic Strength: Bridges the gap between gym performance and real-life application, such as preventing injuries or responding to emergencies.
3. Builds the Foundation for Explosiveness: Prepares you for speed-strength training and dynamic athletic performance.

How to Identify Strength-Speed Training

To distinguish strength-speed from other phases in the continuum:

• Strength: Heavy loads moved at slow speeds (e.g., near-maximal deadlifts).
• Strength-Speed: Heavy but fast—loads that feel challenging yet allow for explosive movement.
• Speed-Strength and Speed: Lower weights moved at higher speeds.

Think of strength-speed as “heavy but fast.” The weight should feel heavy, but you should still be able to move it faster than you would under maximal effort conditions.

Programming Strength-Speed

Here’s how to incorporate strength-speed into your training:

1. Load and Intensity

• Percentage of 1RM: 70–85%
• Reps and Sets: 3–6 sets of 3–6 reps
• Optimal Rep Range: ~18 reps per session
• Total Volume Range: 12–24 reps

2. Exercises

• Olympic Lifts: Power cleans, snatches
• Strength Movements Performed Quickly: Squats, deadlifts with speed emphasis
• Dynamic Exercises: Moderate-weight medicine ball slams

3. Progression Tips

• Start light: If you’re new to strength-speed, begin with 70% of your 1RM and focus on moving the load explosively.
• Prioritize form: Speed without control leads to injury. Ensure proper mechanics before increasing intensity.
• Individualize intensity: Athletes with a background in explosive sports (e.g., football) may thrive at the higher end (80–85%), while endurance-focused individuals may need to stay closer to 70%.

Real-Life Applications

Strength-speed training translates seamlessly into daily life:

• Carrying groceries or lifting heavy objects quickly.
• Shoveling snow or dirt with force and efficiency.
• Preventing injuries, such as catching yourself during a fall or reacting quickly in emergency situations.

By focusing on strength-speed, you’re not only building a more resilient, capable body but also laying the foundation for explosive athletic performance.

Conclusion

Strength-speed training is a vital component of the Hard to Kill programming methodology. It serves as the bridge between maximal strength and explosive power, building functional, dynamic strength for real-world scenarios. Incorporate heavy but fast movements into your routine, and you’ll unlock new levels of strength and resilience.

If you’re ready to put this methodology into action, join the Hard to Kill track at Garage Gym Athlete. Visit garagegymathlete.com for a free trial and start becoming harder to kill today—and for decades to come.

Remember: If you don’t kill comfort, comfort will kill you.

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Podcast Transcript

Jerred: Welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast. I'm Jerred Moon. And today we continue our programming series called hard to kill programming methodology. And this is part two strength speed. So big picture. You are listening to a series on programming. If you are interested in this stuff, The behind the scenes of how we program, or maybe you're looking to add some things to your current fitness program.

And I'm going to give you tons of ideas on how to do that over the course of this series, as we go over our hard to kill programming methodology and what this method does is it balances and optimizes both performance. And longevity. So it ensures you're beyond prepared for any daily obstacle all while making it tougher for father time to knock you off.

All right, that's what we want. We want to be harder to kill on a daily basis, more resilient and we want to be hard to kill over a long time period. We don't want to be easy to take out. So today we are covering strength speed. If you recall from part one, I went over strength and I mentioned in part one that strength is a continuum.

In the continuum, we have strength, strength, speed, speed, strength, and speed, and we're going to cover all four. We've already covered strength and today. We're going over strength speed. So first, let's define it. So strength speed refers to the ability to produce high levels of force quickly under relatively heavy loads.

It lies in the middle of the strength speed continuum and it bridges the gap between maximal strength and explosive power. This is where we're getting away from just a Exerting that maximal force, the most possible weight we can fit on the bar, developing strength, moving more towards speed in the continuum, but we're still on the strength side.

We're still strength heavy. So I'm going to get into more of the programming, but some of the key care characteristics of strength speed, it's going to be moderate to heavily heavy loads. So anywhere from 70 to 85%. And that range really has to do with your ability as an athlete. So it's controlled and explosive movement.

There's an emphasis on moving heavy loads as quickly as possible without sacrificing your form without sacrificing your form. I can not state that enough times in a podcast as we move away from strength and towards speed. Okay. Strength. The, the real danger there is from time under tension in a mechanically bad position that could alter your knee joint, your hip, your spine, whatever.

That's where the injury can come from in those movement patterns. So long as you have good form, you know, you're going to be okay. But when we get into speed, what I've noticed in coaching a long time is people get sloppy. Okay. You get sloppy as you try to add more speed, especially in the strength speed portion of these things, because it's like, it's the combination of the two.

We're still on the heavier side of the loads, but we are putting an emphasis on speed. We're trying to move that bar a little bit faster. And so it, it's just opens the door to trying to lift too much load too fast. And, So be very mindful, start very low when you're going into the strength speed and we'll get into that more at the end of this podcast episode when I talk about programming implementation for you.

So force is dominant force output is still the priority when you're going for strength speed, but speed begins to play a significant role. So. So force development, the most power, the most force we can exert is, is strength. If you remember from part one, but now we're going towards speed, but force is still the priority.

Okay. Cause we're on the strength speed, not the speed strength side of things. Examples would be any kind of a lift, Olympic lifting, power cleans, snatches, either you know, typically with a barbell, depending on, again, your training experience could be with a kettlebell. And you can also accelerate. It doesn't just have to be Olympic lifts.

It could be squats or deadlift but performing with speed and heavy resistance. And you can even do things like med ball slams with moderate resistance, but that starts to get slightly more towards the speed strength part of the continuum. So the purpose of strength speed training in general. Is to develop power with a bias towards forced generation.

So if you want to be strong, like if you feel like you ever hitting plateaus in your strength, you feel like you can't get stronger. The results aren't coming as fast as they once were. You're out of that honeymoon phase, or maybe you've been stuck at a plateau for a while, you are not powerful enough to continue to move more loads.

And so that's a big reason strength speed is important. If you can develop more power, you can move weight faster that that is power. You are going to get. Stronger. So again, strength is that base of the pyramid. If we move up this base to strength speed, now you're developing more power and you're getting more force generation.

It can unlock a lot of doors for you and just getting stronger overall as an athlete. And it's the transition from raw strength into more functional dynamic strength for sport and performance. A big reason I don't like Too much hypertrophy training, which is just muscle growth, muscle building. While it makes you look good.

The reason I don't like too much of that is because that all that's all it really does is it just makes you look good. It's not the most functional same with power lifting level strength. Being able to move incredible, incredibly heavy loads is cool, but again, it's not the most functional. Life type strength and it comes with its trade offs.

So when you start to get into strength speed, you're getting into more functional and dynamic strength, which in all reality is more, more appropriately mimics most lifestyle conditions. So you're going to lay the foundation for speed, strength with speed as the the primary focus when you're, when you're moving away from strength, speed to speech strength, you're starting to lay that foundation without just going ballistic and trying to move too fast.

And again in inducing injury, you want to build through this pyramid one stage at a time. So practical applications, why on earth would you want to train a strength speed? I mean, anything and everything in your life, you're carrying groceries, you're picking up a heavy bag or a box and you're moving it quickly to the car.

You know, that mimics strength, speed, having to move things. A little bit faster yard work. If you're like shoveling snow or dirt, you're going to, that involves force with a, you know, speed under load, being able to throw things, anything of that nature and it helps you prevent injury. So strength, speed training helps improve reaction times and strength in real life scenarios like catching yourself during a fall or just being able to move quickly to grab your kid if they're about to, to fall into a pool or, or whatever, any, any kind of, where you might need to be a little bit more dynamic than slow, maximal effort strength.

This is where we're starting to go in this speed, continuum, the strength continuum. So again, while you are ultimately going to want to focus on strength first, then strength speed, there's going to be an easy way to think about these things. If you remember, The, what I gave you in the first part of the series strength was, I was like, Hey, if you're under low speed conditions, you're probably building strength.

The quick and easy way to think of strength speed is just heavy, but fast, heavy, but fast. That's it. Because if it's just heavy and you're not moving very fast, then you're under the low speed conditions, right? You're, you're building strength. If you're just moving fast, you're, you're more towards speed strength, which we'll talk about in the next episode.

But you, again, you're, you're not in the heavy. So if you can just think heavy, but fast, heavy, but fast, if, if it feels heavy, but you are able to kind of move it fast, faster than the, that slow time under tension, developing, you know, strength technique, then you are going to be, In the strength speed category.

And I like to give people these quick ideas on how you can implement it because I can give you you know, percentages and reps and sets and optimal rep ranges, which I'm about to do, but they aren't a hundred percent specific to the individual. Because I can give you what the best averages are, what a scientific study might set might say, but ultimately it doesn't tell you if you're actually doing the thing, right?

Because you could be moving too slow. You could be moving too fast. So you have to make sure you're in the right category. So moving heavy loads with as much speed as possible while maintaining control and form. Is strength speed. It's about blending the force from strength with the intent of speed. So think of it as the middle ground where strength meets explosiveness.

So now if we were to program it, like I said, 70 to 85 percent is where you want to be. So typically the amount of sets you're going to want to hit three to six sets. The optimal rep ranges is, is going to be about 18 with the total range being anywhere from 12 to 24. So this could be six sets of three, three sets of six, you know, any way you want to break this down at that 70 to 80 percent of your one rep max.

And you are, you are in the strength speed part of the category here. And like I mentioned earlier in the podcast, you are, each individual is different. I know some people who can very easily move 80 percent of their one rep max quickly, right? Even though it's 80 percent of their one rep max, they might have more.

Type two muscle fibers, more fast twitch. They're more explosive. Maybe they're just born that way, or they've trained that way for a long time. They can move those weights fast. Some people are more slow twitch. And if you're coming from more of an endurance, slow twitch background, moving any of these quickly might not be the You know, something that you're capable of doing right away.

So you're going to want to go on the lower end of the spectrum. But if you just keep in the back of your mind, like, Hey, heavy, but fast, heavy, but fat, heavy, but fast, put, put on 70 percent and try three reps, five reps, four reps, six reps, anything like that. Is it heavy? Does it feel heavy? And are you able to move it fast?

Definitely faster than if we were 80 to 90 or 90 plus percent of a one rep max. And if that, if you're like, Hey, this is heavy and it's fast, go to 75, try 80, 80 is where it's going to start to get challenging. And also, if you remember from part one of the series, 80 is where we start to tip into strength, 80 to 90, 90 plus percent.

You're wondering max. We're really more in the strength categories. So I'd say 70 percent to 75 percent of your one rep max, three to six reps, three to six sets, optimal rep ranges, 18, you're going to be in that category and you can bump it up if you want from there, 75 might be the sweet spot for a lot of people and 80 for people who might be, you know, More involved with this type of training or have done a lot of power based training Maybe they come from like a football background something more you know explosive in nature that kind of sport You might be really good at these things already, but strength speed is super important because it's laying the groundwork You know We go from strength of strength speed to speed strength next and then ultimately speed if you can master the entire strength continuum You're gonna be a very good athlete And you're also going to be very hard to kill, not only today, but in the decades that follow.

So that's it for this one. That's how you can start to train strength, speed, and how we utilize it in our hard to kill programming methodology for all of our athletes out there. in the program utilizing this methodology. We really appreciate you. And if you ever want to see any of this in action, make sure you're on the hard to kill track.

I know we have a lot of options out there. Now, if you want to see what this is like, you're not a part of our training. You can go to garagegymathlete. com. You can sign up for a free trial and see how strength speed looks in a training program. But that's it for this one. Remember if you don't kill comfort, comfort will kill you.