Hard to Kill Programming Methodology: Part 3 - Speed/Strength

Speed-strength training is a vital piece of the Hard to Kill programming methodology, balancing performance and longevity. It focuses on developing explosive power and dynamic strength, keeping athletes agile, resilient, and hard to kill in daily life and over decades.

What is Speed-Strength?

Speed-strength sits on the strength continuum between strength-speed and pure speed. It emphasizes applying force quickly under moderate resistance and prioritizes speed over raw force. Here’s how the continuum flows:

1. Strength: Heavy loads, slow speed.
2. Strength-Speed: Heavy, but fast.
3. Speed-Strength: Fast force with moderate resistance.
4. Speed: Pure velocity, minimal resistance.

In speed-strength training, lighter loads (50–70% of your one-rep max) allow for rapid acceleration and maximum bar speed. While the loads are lighter, the intensity lies in maintaining explosive control—a hallmark of athletic power.

Why Train Speed-Strength?

Incorporating speed-strength into your training unlocks power, agility, and real-world athleticism. It’s essential for transitioning from raw strength to practical, high-speed performance.

Benefits of Speed-Strength Training:

• Build Explosive Power: Develops fast-twitch muscle fibers, crucial for strength and speed.
• Maintain Athleticism: Keeps you agile and capable of quick, dynamic movements.
• Prevent Injury: Improves reaction time and enhances control under dynamic conditions.
• Enhance Longevity: Preserves power, speed, and mobility as you age.

Real-Life Applications

Speed-strength isn’t just for athletes—it applies to anyone who values functionality and resilience:

• Quick Reflexes: React faster in everyday situations, like catching a falling object or avoiding danger.
• Recreational Sports: Gain an edge in basketball, soccer, tennis, or any activity requiring quick, powerful movements.
• Daily Activities: Lift or move objects quickly and efficiently without compromising form.
• Playing with Kids: Keep up with the fast-paced energy of children while staying injury-free.

How to Identify Speed-Strength

An easy way to remember speed-strength is “fast force.” The goal is to move quickly under resistance. Unlike strength-speed (which is heavy but fast), speed-strength prioritizes speed first, with lighter loads still providing a challenge.

Examples of Speed-Strength Exercises:

• Olympic Lifts: Power cleans and snatches with lighter loads.
• Jump Squats: Performed with a weighted vest or barbell.
• Sled Pushes: Lighter loads pushed explosively.
• Dynamic Barbell Work: 10 sets of 2 reps at 50% of your one-rep max, moving the bar as fast as possible.

Programming Speed-Strength

Load and Intensity

• Percentage of 1RM: 50–70%
• Sets and Reps: 3–6 sets of 3–6 reps
• Optimal Rep Range: 24 reps/session
• Total Volume Range: 18–30 reps

Progression Tips

• Start light: Begin at 50–55% of your 1RM and focus on speed over load.
• Increase gradually: Add 5% each week until reaching 70%, then reset and repeat.
• Prioritize speed: The bar or weight should move quickly while maintaining perfect form.

Using Technology

Bar speed apps can track your progress by measuring the velocity of each lift. These tools help ensure you’re hitting speed-strength targets and maintaining progress over time.

Why Speed-Strength Matters

Strength alone isn’t enough—speed-strength bridges the gap between raw power and practical performance. It’s the secret to staying athletic, agile, and powerful as you age. Whether you’re an athlete, a weekend warrior, or just looking to move better in life, speed-strength training is a game-changer.

For those ready to elevate their training, speed-strength is integral to the Hard to Kill programming methodology. It’s about optimizing performance and longevity, ensuring you’re prepared for anything life throws your way.

Get Started with Speed-Strength Training

Ready to implement speed-strength into your routine? Join the Hard to Kill track at Garage Gym Athlete to experience expert programming designed to build explosive power, maintain athleticism, and make you harder to kill.

Sign up for a free trial at garagegymathlete.com to see how speed-strength training can transform your fitness.

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

Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week

Podcast Transcript

Jerred: 

 Welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast. I'm Jerred Moon. And today we go further into our programming series. This is hard to kill programming methodology. Part three, speed strength. So we are into this series, three parts, and specifically we're going over our hard to kill programming methodology. So it's a balancing act that 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. That's what we want. We want to be hard to kill. Today, and over decades, daily over decades, we want to be hard to kill. So I'm going over our programming methodology, the hard to kill programming methodology that we use at Garage Gym Athlete that has been refined across thousands and thousands and thousands of athletes and many, many years of training, coaching, and programming.

It's very proven in the real world, in the clinical setting, in the setting of human beings using it, seeing results. Either whether they need to use their fitness on the battlefield or in life we have a far spectrum of athletes who've utilized this methodology with a lot of success and I'm breaking it all down.

The 13 different areas that we train part by part, I'm, you know, I'm giving you each part of our methods. Ultimately, towards the end of this series, I'll be revealing project Delta, where we talk about the next evolution of this programming methodology and how we will be utilizing it into the future of garage team athlete.

So like I said, today we are covering speed strength in part three here, not to be confused with strength speed. I may even accidentally interchange them even though they're not interchangeable at all. So I'm going to be Trying to be very careful in saying it, but today we are covering speed strength.

So if you recall from part one and two, strength is a continuum. In the strength continuum, we have strength, strength, speed, speed, strength, and then speed. And we will cover all four in the series. We've already covered. Strength and strength speed. And today we're covering speed strength. So there's only one left in the series after this one, and that will be speed.

But speed strength refers to the ability to apply force quickly, apply force quickly, it's prioritizing speed while still working with moderate resistance. So it's further along the strength, speed continuum, leaning closer to speed than just strength. So we're starting to get faster in the. Loads are starting to get lighter.

If you haven't realized that across the continuum, the strength continuum, that's exactly how it works. It's heavy loads, less speed. Then we go to moderate load, more speed, lighter load. More speed. And then once we get to speed, it'd be almost no load, pure speed. And so that's what we're going into the strength continuum, but they build off of one another.

And sometimes when you have one of these missing in overall program. You won't see results or you start to stall the longer it goes. Now you won't stall after one four week wave or 12 week cycle. But over time, when years go by, you will start to stall whether you don't have the strength, speed or the speech strength or something.

You don't have the power to produce more force. You'll, you'll realize where the holes were in your program overall. So just to define it, or just some of the key characteristics of speed strength. So it's lighter loads, typically 50 to 70 percent of the one rep max. And again, towards the end of the podcast, I'll get into specific.

Specifically how you can program this with barbells, percentages, loads, intensities, all those kinds of things. But it's where speed is maximized while maintaining resistance. So explosiveness first movements are focused on rapid acceleration and maximum bar or body speed. If you're familiar at all.

With Louis Simmons from Westside Barbell. You know that I have really enjoyed his teachings and reading his stuff over the years. He unfortunately passed a few years ago. But he knows like he is the, the godfather of strength training. And to put it in a very, Crudely simple way. He has two different days that he would train at West side barbell.

And that was max effort day and dynamic effort day. So dynamic effort day is what a lot of people don't do when they're training strength, dynamic efforts, moving quickly. He would do 10 sets of. Two at 50 percent of the one rep max focusing on explosiveness. And typically they would do four days at, you know, at Westside barbell, two max effort, two dynamic effort.

So for the Godfather of all strength training to be putting two of these days, basically in his strength program. You know that they are, it is very important. So explosiveness is how you generate power. Power produces force and ultimately force exertion is strength. So that's what you want. You really want speed, strength, very, very important.

One of the most important parts of the strength continuum, especially if you want to maintain athleticism. So speed is dominant here. Unlike strength, speed, speed, strength, speed is the dominant thing. Force is still applied. But the goal is to move the load as fast as possible. So examples here could be a lip Olympic lifts with lighter loads, jump squats with a weighted vest or a barbell sled pushes, you know, at lighter loads so you can move fast.

Or even like I mentioned how they did it at West side barbell, you could be doing. 10 sets of two at 50 percent of your one rep max. And it's only two reps, but all we're trying to do is move that as fast as we possibly can to develop more force, to generate more force. So here's the deal. What am I going to say?

Every time we talk about speed. Form and control is the most important and probably the most important in this part of the strength continuum. I'd say strength speed is where it can get pretty sloppy and dangerous because of the moderate to heavy loads, speed, speed, strength, on the other hand, is also kind of in a danger zone for a lot of athletes because the loads are.

Are so much lighter. You're going to feel like you can basically throw them. You know, you can, you can do a lot of cool things with speech strength, but if you do any of that with poor piss, poor form, you could end up injured. So again, form always paramount pretty much anytime you're doing fitness, but especially when you're trying to.

Train speed, strength, or doing any kind of dynamic efforts. So the big part of why it's beneficial, it does develop quick you know, fast Twitch muscle fibers is spent essential for speed and explosiveness. It keeps workouts engaging with dynamic fast paced movements, which you don't get to do all the time and it helps you maintain agility, speed and reaction time in real life scenarios.

So if you're ever looking to jump over a puddle, you know, cut real fast, all of these things that a lot of us have to do, it comes up in life or if you just want to maintain your athleticism. I know that's a big one for me. I just want to be athletic for as long as possible, be able to move without feeling like I hurt myself or like, Jump down from a rock and not feel like I just broke my back.

You know, all of these kinds of things are important as you age. So maintaining that speed is a great way to main at the gym. Athleticism for years and years to come. So the purpose of speed strength speed strength training is simple. It's the enhanced, the ability to produce rapid bursts of power and to translate strength into practical high speed performance.

And you want to improve athletic qualities like sprinting, jumping, or throwing explosiveness. So if you are an actual athlete of any capacity, you're going to be wanting to train speed, strength, and most athletes do. But most non athletes, meaning you're not a professional football player. You're not a professional tennis player.

You're not a professional pitcher in the MLB. You might not be incorporating these things into your training. That doesn't mean, Hey, I'm not a professional athlete. I shouldn't do these things. You absolutely should. Cause the practical applications for anybody who's not a professional athlete is you can have quick reflex movements.

So reacting fast to catching something that's falling or stepping out of the way of danger any kind of recreational sports that you might play, whether that is basketball, tennis, soccer. Anytime you need quick, powerful movements, playing with your kids, anything like that, you're going to want to be training speed, strength, and then everyday activities.

If you have to quickly lift an object, place an object, anything like that, very important. So I always like to give you an easy way to think about it. And this one is fast force, two words, fast force. So the other when we were talking about strength speed, I said heavy, but fast. So it's. Heavy, but you're starting to move fast.

This one is just fast force. So we're thinking about speed first. Am I moving fast? Okay. Now, if I'm doing a, an air squat, I can do an air squat very fast, but that is more into the speed. I can do an air squat so fast. And I'm sure you could too, that you might end up having to jump, right? That's that is the development of speed.

But now where's the force? Where's the load? So fast force is like, okay, well. Could I put a barbell on my back and do a squat really fast? Or could I do an air squat as fast as I can with a weighted vest? Now we're getting into speed strength training, and you can move the loads really fast. And it's not necessarily about muscle fatigue or burning or anything like that.

And that's what I always try and teach athletes when they first start to introduce this into their training. If you're doing a couple of reps, At 50 percent of your one rep max and you're, you're just moving fast and that's it. You're just trying to move fast with perfect form for a couple of reps.

You're not going to feel much. You're not going to feel like you are completely exhausted like you would at the end of a very heavy strength training day, or if you're trying to get a lot of time under tension, your muscles aren't going to feel super fatigued. It's, it's a different type of training.

It's more athletic style. It's dynamic in nature. So you're not going to feel it as much. And that's okay. We're only trying to apply fast force, fast force. That's it. So let's get into actually programming, programming it for you. What would it look like if you're utilizing a barbell? Well, this is going to be typically 50 to 65, even up to 70 percent of your one rep max.

So three to six sets typically, and reps are also three to six. The optimal rep range is going to be 24 with a total range being anywhere from 18 to 30, and this is for speed strength. So if you were doing six sets of four repetitions at 55 percent of your one rep max, that would be a good speed strength day.

And I think that's the best way for people to start to, to utilize it. You can go from, I say 55 to 65 is a sweet spot for most people. You can go down to 50. And you can go up to 70, but again, it's like like I mentioned in part two, when we were talking about strength speed, it really depends on the athlete.

So you might not want to be at the top end of 65 or 70 percent of your one rep max trying to move. For reps as, as fast as you can, because you might be moving a little bit too slow and you might be more on the strength speed side of the continuum to ensure that you're on the speed strength side of the continuum, maintaining that atlas athleticism, generating that power, you want fast force.

So you want the barbell moving pretty fast. So in this case, it's okay to err on the side of a lighter loads. So starting with 55 percent really isn't going to hurt anything. And then jumping up week to week 55. You know, 50 the first week, 55 the second week, 60 the third week, 65 the fourth week, so on and so forth.

And then coming back down, adding a little bit more weight as you get stronger and start to move faster. And there are a lot of really cool apps out there. I'm not going to recommend any specifically, but if you did Google any kind of bar speed app, there are lots of them out there. You can download these.

And what do you do is you set your phone up to the side of the barbell that you're lifting. Say you're on the back squat. Okay. And it can trace the barbell moving up and down. Sometimes it requires having buying something else that attaches the barbell and you can actually see how fast you're moving the velocity of the barbell.

And this is a great way. If you want to get very serious about speed strength, you can see how fast you are moving that bar how fast rep to rep, set to set. And then also over time, as you add more weight, can you maintain the same bar velocity with 10 pounds? Extra pounds, 20 extra pounds over the course of a training program.

That's how you can really determine how well you're doing. So ultimately speed strength is super important. Like I said, Louis Simmons had two of these days dedicated to all of his athletes who are some of the strongest, most powerful people in the world. We don't have that goal necessarily here at garage gym athlete, but we do have the goal of being incredibly well rounded.

So speed strength is very important to maintain that athleticism and power as you age. And then just, if you want to be an awesome, capable human being, so definitely implement speed strength training in your day to day. If you want us to implement it for you, then go over to garage, gym, athlete. com, sign up for a free trial.

And you can see exactly how we implement this. Type of programming and for all of our athletes who are already utilizing it, seeing great results, really appreciate each and every single one of you. But to all of you, remember, if you don't kill comfort, comfort will kill you.