Amit Subhash Sardal is a Fitness Educator and Exercise Specialist with over 16 years of experience in client coaching and Fitness Tech. Well-versed in GLP-1-focused fitness interventions, he combines exercise science with practical coaching expertise to support sustainable health and performance. An experienced Learning & Development professional, Amit also serves as Faculty for the Master’s in Human Movement program at the University of Mumbai. For consultations, personalized training plans and professional learning support, Amit can be reached at sardalamit@gmail.com
If sport does not look like weight training, why should athletes lift weights? It is a fair question.
Most sports are played on the feet, in constantly changing positions. Athletes sprint, brake, turn, jump, land, throw, strike, collide, react and recover. Very little of this looks like a squat, deadlift, press or power clean. But weight training is not meant to imitate sport. Its purpose is to develop the physical qualities that allow an athlete to perform sport more effectively.
Strength Underpins Athletic Performance
Most sports are multidimensional. Depending on the sport, an athlete may need endurance, speed, power, agility, balance, coordination, mobility and accuracy. All these qualities matter, but strength has an important role beneath many of them. In simple terms, strength is the ability of the muscular system to produce force.
Every athletic movement requires force
When an athlete accelerates, they push force into the ground. When they jump, they produce force rapidly. When they land, they absorb force. When they throw, strike or tackle, force is transferred through different parts of the body. When they change direction, they must first brake and then produce force again in a new direction. This is why developing strength has such broad value.
Strength Creates a Bigger Physical Reserve
Consider two athletes performing the same sporting action. For the weaker athlete, that action may require a very high percentage of their maximum physical capacity. For the stronger athlete, the same task may represent a much smaller percentage. That difference creates a strength reserve. The stronger athlete has more force available when they need it and may also perform repeated submaximal actions with less relative effort. This can influence several sporting qualities. Speed depends partly on how much force an athlete can apply to the ground and how rapidly they can apply it. Power is the ability to produce force quickly. Strength does not automatically make an athlete powerful, but greater force-producing capacity provides a larger base from which power can be developed.
Agility requires acceleration, deceleration and redirection
Before changing direction, the athlete must absorb force, control the body and then push in another direction. Endurance can also benefit from a higher strength base. If each repeated action represents a smaller percentage of maximum capacity, the athlete may be able to sustain that activity more efficiently.
Training Is Not Practice
This distinction is important. The gym does not teach a footballer how to pass, a tennis player how to serve, a boxer how to punch, or a cricketer how to bat. Sport practice develops skill. Strength training develops the physical capacity that supports those skills.
Exercises such as squats, deadlifts, presses, pulls and appropriately programmed explosive lifts develop force production, muscular strength and control underload. They do not need to visually resemble sport to be useful.
Trying to make every gym exercise look like the sporting movement can miss the point. The sport itself already provides highly specific practice. The role of strength and conditioning is to build a stronger physical foundation beneath it.
Why Athletes Should Lift
Lifting weights does not replace skill, technique or sport-specific preparation. It supports them. A stronger athlete has greater force-producing capacity, a larger physical reserve and a better foundation for developing qualities such as speed and power. Properly programmed strength training can also help athletes tolerate the repeated demands placed on their bodies.
The principle is simple. Practice a sport to develop the skill. Lift weights to build the body capable of expressing that skill.
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