Horizontal force production

[Brookfine]

Miami has been brutally hot this year, so it's looking like I'm going to be focusing on strength training until October instead of sprinting.

In the past 3 months I moved from (365, 275, 405) to (435, 325, 515) on SBD while maintaining speed on one track workout a week. With the next few months I'm wondering if I should be adding a lift that might work horizontal force production more, but I'm not sure what that would be.

I'm curious if sleds might be a good idea but I've seen some horrifying ankle injuries watching videos of strongmen pushing sleds and pulling cars. Is there a barbell lift that trains that horizontal force production to the same degree?

[Mark Rippetoe]

How is horizontal force produced differently such that it needs to be trained specifically?

[Brookfine]

Surely, because you're generating force from a position that isn't directly above your center of mass you're going to have different parts of the range of motion emphasized as well as different stabilizers and different tendons being loaded, no? Otherwise we may as well say squat and deadlift are equivalent because we use the same muscles in both.

I get that sports specific training questions are annoying given that pitchers keep asking if they can throw dumbbells, but I don't think it's insane to look for broad strokes movements that focus on force development ahead of the CoM rather than above it.

[Mark Rippetoe]

If your squat goes from 135 to 315, and your deadlift goes from 185 to 385, what happens to your horizontal force production ability?

[Maybach]

If you really think about this, Brookfine, and I mean really put that wet pink walnut to work, I think you can figure out why you have the wrong idea here.


Here's something to get you started. The center of mass is a physical, not physiological, concept. When you are exerting "horizontal force:

1) Where is the center of mass?

2) Is the force applied by the human body in this case have any component which does not intersect this object? What happens to an object which experiences forces orthogonal to the line between the origin of that force and the center of mass? Hint: it is not translation.

3) What tendons and muscles are not loaded during the squat that would be helpful for "horizontal force production"?