Strenght & Stamina vs Speed & Agility

I have already mentioned this point in my training journal, but as it is not a discussion place, I desided to re-write the situation here.

So, I am starting to do some work-outs to make my physical shape better, but as I don't have much experience in this field I don't know what specialisation and training programm to choose.

I had some limitations in my childhood due to eyesight-related reasons, and I haven't been visiting PE lessons at school. But even still I am completely not a sportish type of person, my friends mention that I am rather strong just by my nature and even call me "the Hulk" time to time. Also, I have a rather hight level of stamina - I can walk on foot almost twice longer than my "sporty" friends, and dive up to 3 meters deep without any equipment.

But on the other hand, I definetly have a lack of speed, agility and reaction. I'm clumsy, I have rather slow reaction and I'm really bad in running. Even choosing the class of the craracter in MMORPG games, I usually choose tanks or short-range damage dealers, like Warrior or Berserker in fantasy games, or any type of Jedi Knight in SWTOR, because I am not fast and accurate enough to take long-range classes such as Wizard or Ranger but intuitively understand how a good punch works.

So, according to this, I am naturally more capable for training which is weight-lifting, strenght and stamina oriented, may be even something of the strongmen type. But on the other hand, such type of a training has not so good infuence on agility and speed.

That's why I ask for your opinion.

What would you prefer - try to "heal" your weak points and concentrate on aspects you're bad in, or leave them as they are and focus on your natural talents?

Gym culture and strength training are way more versatile than you know! I’ll give a very very basic run down/overview and say that any competent strength coach or personal trainer is going to have to start with joint mobility and stability (which you can kind of think as meaning stretches and body weight exercises, often incorporating elastic bands and yoga-like poses) and what youre calling “flexibility”will definitely improve if you do the exercises that youre supposed to do for your warm ups and cool downs.

Power and strength are related but distinct; strength is purely the amount of force you can generate from any given position and power is strength applied quickly. So, pure strength would be the most amount of weight you could lift for a single repetition and power will be the highest amount of weight you could lift in a high speed, explosive movement.

Olympic weight lifting focuses on power, powerlifting (despite the name) focuses on pure strength, but both sports train for power and strength. Strong man is more strength but theres plenty of power events, too, like keg tossing.

Whether you lean towards strong man or powerlifting or olympic style weight lifting, youre going to have to train all of these attributes. So its really not a question of “speed and strength vs agility and stamina” - its not either/or, its all/both.

The answer i would give to your question is to do whatever seems like the most fun to you. It does sound to me like youre natural capabilities make you well suited to weight training and i guess id just reassure you that if you have a competent coach or you follow a proven program, you will not only get much stronger but youll also train speed and agility, and probably reaction times as well because speed and agility training have some positive impact on that even without trying. And coaches have exercises that focus on reaction times, too. So yeah, go for the weights and dont fret about it!

An example of Oly lifting: the snatch


An example of powerlifting: the deadlift

I mean fitness goals are usually related to some sort of utility. What are you wanting to do in terms of fitness, or are you just wanting to be physically fit for the sake of it?

In my experience, it's really hard to "min-max" your physical training in a RPG-esque way. If you're wanting to work on speed, agility, and reaction, try just playing organized sports (basketball, rugby, and water polo are all excellent choices). Swimming is my go-to exercise since it covers quite a few useful categories as well.

Ob1 makes a good point that a lot of exercises are built on being able to have full range of motion, so stretch according to how you're using your body (e.g. gymnasts do limited ballistic stretching since they do that in competition, even though ballistic stretches aren't recommended anymore)

I will consider this in terms of self-defense.
Would you rather throw someone, or outrun someone?
Or even better, chase someone down, and then throw them!
Food for thought.

CaesarEJW wrote: I will consider this in terms of self-defense.
Would you rather throw someone, or outrun someone?
Or even better, chase someone down, and then throw them!
Food for thought.

True question- what happens when two masters meet as opposed to two fighters?

Do a bit of both....as you are already doing. Understand your weaknesses, Develop your stregnths

"There's a poem which says, 'When two Zen masters meet each other on the road, they need no introduction; thieves recognize one another instantaneously.'"
- Alan Watts

CaesarEJW wrote: I will consider this in terms of self-defense.
Would you rather throw someone, or outrun someone?
Or even better, chase someone down, and then throw them!
Food for thought.

Knock out him. Simply.

Meh. Boring.
Where's the fun in simply knocking someone out?
If another mortal is truly thy enemy, thou shalt and must put the fear of God into him!!!
SHAHUPADYA!!!!

Rainbow Firefly wrote: .....
What would you prefer - try to "heal" your weak points and concentrate on aspects you're bad in, or leave them as they are and focus on your natural talents?

My thoughts on it in brief (& no quals);

Basics for me are avoiding things which limit longevity of functional capacities, and impairment of functional capacities.

The former references more longer ranged impacts like diet or cumulative damage from too much exercise (joints, heart etc)... while the later references injury. I've heard about marathon runners and triathletes in their 40's with oversized hearts that fail and they drop dead because they've overtrained for 35 years. It doesn't sound healthy or fit to be a wreck or dead before even half way through life!

But I don't view fitness in terms of strength and stamina vs speed and agility.

More like;
- 'fitness' to me references cardiovascular capacity under physical load,
- 'functional fitness' seems to reference endurance in broad compound strength movements,
- 'strength' references power in more specific compound strength movements,
- 'operational/occupational fitness', which is the specific task/job type of endurance.
- finally, mind fitness might be a good one. The appropriate mindsets to safely integrate all these things into the rigor of normal life. Consisting of both the training and recovery between training.

Speed is just a function of power to weight AFAIK. So having the capacity to generate the power is vital but also put it down efficiently to translate that into motion. Once at speed maintaining momentum becomes where strength of enduring power and form, probably, as weight shifts to being an advantage perhaps (albeit probably more a load on the heart and joints and related to increased air resistance, which drains more then any conservation of momentum that might exist?).

I'd not focus on ones strengths at the expense of ones weakness, as this might lead to increasing imbalances in the supporting structures like soft tissue and skeleton (eg posture) and go to further reduce the chance of bringing the weak areas back up. To me a strength and a weakness are different from an ability or disability. If performance is the goal, then strong muscles can take the load from weaker surrounding ones but if those weaker ones are also made strong then the stronger one is just made even stronger... so it's good to know ones body and how it moves to work out how you might want to train.

But every body is different, and some don't put on mass easily so benefit from isolation type of training to target different individual muscles over longer periods of time to bring lasting improvement incrementally over the body. And some folk can just smash out compound functional training without getting injured long enough so the gains are more then dropping body fat and water swelling of muscle bellies. If performance though is measured in results, then it might be more about mindset and safe training consistency then finding a silver bullet. Otherwise, ^, IMO.