The Case for Absolute Strength

Déjà Vu All Over Again

Old wine, new bottles.

Athletic men that lift weights using absolute strength techniques and tactics become larger, more powerful versions of their athletic selves. Unathletic men that lift weights using absolute strength techniques and tactics become larger, more powerful versions of their unathletic selves.

Strength-Endurance Is Not Enough

I got into a philosophic tiff the other day with a fight trainer, a good one, who told me his stable of fighters “did not need absolute strength — that’s not the type of strength fighters want or need.” Fighters, he continued, need “strength-endurance,” and all his strength training efforts were confined to “drills that created sustained strength, the kind of strength that can be called upon deep into the third, 5-minute round of an MMA fight.”

The MMA coach had his fighters push wheelbarrows loaded with barbell plates up steep grades, throw medicine balls for height and distance, pick each other up and run around the circumference of the gym, shoulder 100-pound heavy bags and start doing repetitions in the suplex, sprint up steep hills wearing weight vests, etc.

All his drills were designed to build a fighter’s “gas tank,” the fighter’s ability to endure and “put out” deep into a fight. His final stinging retort: “We don’t need to build a fighter’s bench press.” First off, I love his strength-endurance drills and want him to keep them up. But this is not an either / or deal, a choice between strength-endurance and absolute strength. All athletes, including fighters, need strength-endurance and absolute strength. Not one or the other. Both.

His dismissal of the need for absolute strength is one I have heard for decades. It sounded so déjà vu, so familiar. His attitude exactly reflected the attitudes of olden-day football coaches, lockstep-thinking men of the 1950s and 1960s who forbade players from weight training because weight training would slow them down, make them musclebound, and ruin their athletic ability.

Football Coaches Had to Learn the Same Lesson

This was the settled science of its day: coaches could and did punish players caught secretly lifting weights. So, what changed this attitude? When did the seismic shift occur, from an era when lifters were forbidden to lift weights to an era where all college and pro players were required to lift weights?

Football coaches got their minds changed for them. They were bitch-slapped into reality when their non-weight-trained players started getting manhandled, overwhelmed, overpowered, tossed aside, pancaked, position by position, by a new breed of way bigger, way stronger, just-as-fast, just-as-agile, weight-trained players.

The emergence of the powerhouse, weight-trained Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1970s was the game changer in pro football. Head coach Chuck Noll brought in world-record Olympic weightlifter Lou Riecke as his strength coach. Alvin Roy, working with the San Diego Chargers under Sid Gillman, had helped launch the earlier pro-football weight-training revolution.

Lou was old school all the way. The mighty Steelers trained brutally. At the time, NFL teams did not all have polished, on-site, modern strength palaces. Riecke’s future Hall-of-Fame players squatted, power cleaned, bench pressed, overhead pressed, deadlifted, rowed, and worked arms at the end of sessions. Then, in true old-school style, they went on with life.

Both on offense and defense, the Steelers beat the hell out of other NFL teams. The Steelers were just as fast, just as agile, and had just as much endurance as any other team — but they were way bigger and way stronger.

Before weight training became accepted, defensive tackles and defensive ends were smaller, and the idea that strength training would ruin athleticism still had credibility. The Steelers helped put an end to that small-ball thinking. Mike Webster became the archetype of the frighteningly strong, weight-trained football lineman. Walter Payton, another immortal, came out of Jackson State and became a power-running demigod. Football coaches changed their tune when their teams started getting beaten up and embarrassed by muscled-up opponents.

Paul Anderson and Olympic Weightlifting’s Wake-Up Call

Once upon a time, Olympic weightlifters did the three competitive lifts exclusively: the press, snatch, and clean and jerk. These lifters of the 1940s and 1950s eschewed squats and deadlifts, stating that they did not need “that kind of strength.”

Absolute strength training, they insisted, would slow them down and destroy the lightning-fast reflexes needed for optimal Olympic weightlifting. Doing other lifts would take away time that could and should be dedicated toward getting ever more technically proficient at the three lifts.

That was settled science. When did the seismic shift occur, from an era when Olympic weightlifters were forbidden to do any lift other than the press, snatch, or clean and jerk, or some close variation, to an era when all serious Olympic weightlifters were required to use other lifts to improve performance in the three competitive lifts?

The mind-changer in this case was a massive, unnaturally strong hillbilly named Paul Anderson. At age 22 and weighing somewhere in the 340-pound range, Paul was stupid strong. He overpowered and bulled up poundage, technique be damned. On Anderson’s first trip to the Soviet Union in 1955, he stunned the Soviet weightlifting world.

World records are normally moved upward in small jumps. Anderson, in one fell swoop, pressed more than 400 pounds overhead in the Soviet Union. Strength-history accounts have the Russians gobsmacked, mind-blown, calling him a wonder of nature. For some inherent reason, Russians love chess and Olympic weightlifting.

During his extended State Department-sponsored visit, Anderson requested that his Russian hosts construct for him a set of squat racks. After seeing Paul squat massive poundage for reps, and after seeing him crush the best lifters in the world, a light bulb went off. The Russians adopted squatting as a regular part of their training template.

Tyson, Leonard, and the Reality of Size

I mentioned to my fight-trainer friend that Sugar Ray Leonard and Mike Tyson were not radically different in height. I asked my MMA fight coach friend, the man who dismissed the need for absolute strength, who would win if Ray and Tyson fought at their respective peaks.

“Tyson, of course.”

Yet on paper, Ray Leonard trumps Tyson in nearly every category save one. Speed? Ray. Agility? Ray. Flexibility? Ray. Endurance? Ray. Reaction time? Ray. Fight skills? Ray. Experience? Ray. Titles? Ray. Ring savvy? Ray.

Power, size and strength? Tyson.

Tyson at his heavyweight peak was more than 60 pounds heavier than Leonard at welterweight. My counterargument was simple: if size, power, and strength did not matter, if absolute strength did not matter, then why does MMA have weight classes? It was a rhetorical question. They need weight classes because dramatic inequalities in size and strength, amongst equals, cannot be overcome. As the old boxing cliché goes, “A good big whips a good little man every time.”

One Hour a Week for Absolute Strength

The maddening part for me is that absolute strength can be improved with a shockingly small weekly time investment when the training is expertly selected, scaled and periodized. Cutting-edge strength minimalists that we are, our approach is to have the trained fighter squat, bench press, deadlift, and overhead press once a week, all in the same session.

Work up to a single “top set” using whatever poundage and rep scheme the periodized, preplanned schedule calls for. Then move on to the next exercise. Absolute strength can improve dramatically across 12 weeks when the athlete starts far below his true strength ceiling. The exact percentage depends on the athlete, training age, technical skill, recovery, bodyweight, nutrition, and coaching.

That is a lot of return for a one-hour weekly time investment.

Power train for an hour per week with all your heart — then go do what you do.

Why Fighters Still Need Power Training

Keep pursuing sustained strength. Build that bigger gas tank. Keep doing all your current fighter drills and protocols. Just give me one hour a week to power-ize your athletes. I will hand you back fighters way stronger and, when the process is coached correctly, just as lean, just as fast, just as agile.

In many cases, they will be faster after working with me because intelligently applied absolute-strength training improves force production. The world’s greatest sprinters and power athletes have used hardcore weight training for decades. The point is not to make fighters into powerlifters. The point is to give fighters a deeper reserve of usable strength.

Power-trained fighters can develop improved resistance to injury when the program is intelligent and progressive. This is one of the underreported benefits of power training. Hard, heavy, consistent lifting can strengthen muscles and connective tissues, improve force tolerance and make a contact athlete more durable. That does not make an athlete injury-proof. It gives him a thicker armor plate.

Stronger fighters hit way harder and kick a hell of a lot harder. Stronger fighters overwhelm weaker opponents in clinches and scrambles. All this for an hour a week? Some attitudes never die. This MMA coach is the modern reincarnation of the 1960s football coach. Will my MMA coach buddy be swayed by my irrefutable logic? I doubt it. As my Irish dad used to say, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” I suspect the only thing that will sway his rigid mindset is when a bunch of muscled-up power fighters begin overwhelming his super-fit skinny boys.

Safety Note for Fighters and Heavy Strength Training

This article preserves Marty Gallagher’s RAW strength-training argument and firsthand coaching perspective. It is not individualized medical, rehabilitation, fight-training, or programming advice.

Heavy squats, bench presses, deadlifts, overhead presses, loaded wheelbarrow pushes, hill sprints, medicine-ball throws, weighted-vest work, and fight-conditioning drills require technical mastery, progressive loading, adequate warm-ups, safe equipment, enough recovery, and qualified coaching when needed.

Fighters also have weight classes, skill practice, sparring, conditioning, injuries, and competition timelines to respect. Absolute strength training should support fight performance, not steal recovery from it.

Stop or scale back for sharp pain, dizziness, chest pain, unusual shortness of breath, numbness, repeated technical collapse, uncontrolled bar path, failed warm-ups, excessive fatigue, concussion symptoms, or any symptom that feels different from normal training effort.

Equipment Notes for Absolute Strength and Fighter Conditioning

Absolute strength does not require fancy equipment. It requires a few brutally honest tools, precise technique, progressive loading, and enough discipline to keep strength work from becoming circus work.

For the core strength work Marty describes, lifters and facilities can compare Olympic weightlifting bars, weight plates, and dumbbells. For fighter-conditioning drills, compare medicine balls and slam balls.

A simple strength-and-conditioning setup might include the CAP Barbell Beast Olympic lifting bar, TKO solid rubber bumper plate sets, PowerBlock Pro 125 commercial dumbbell set, and Body-Solid tire tread slam balls, when those tools match the athlete, room, floor, coaching, and intended use.

The equipment does not create absolute strength. The lifter, the coach, the progression, the logbook, and the willingness to strain correctly create absolute strength.

Related Strength Reading

For the broader framework behind absolute, explosive, and sustained strength, read Strength Training Modalities: 3 Types of Strength. For a deeper definition of strength types, read Muscle Strength Defined.

RAW with Marty Gallagher, J.P. Brice, and Jim Steel Podcast.

About the Author: Marty Gallagher

As an athlete Marty Gallagher is a national and world champion in Olympic lifting and powerlifting. He was a world champion team coach in 1991 and coached Black's Gym to five national team titles. He's also coached some of the strongest men on the planet including Kirk Karwoski when he completed his world record 1,003 lb. squat. Today he teaches the US Secret Service and Tier 1 Spec Ops on how to maximize their strength in minimal time. As a writer since 1978 he’s written for Powerlifting USA, Milo, Flex Magazine, Muscle & Fitness, Prime Fitness, Washington Post, Dragon Door and now IRON COMPANY. He’s also the author of multiple books including Purposeful Primitive, Strong Medicine, Ed Coan’s book Coan, The Man, the Myth, the Method and numerous others. Read the Marty Gallagher biography here.