A generation ago youth athletes were ahead of the curve simply by lifting weights in any fashion.

Machines, free weights, bodyweight...anything you did to increase strength and power outperformed the vast majority who didn't yet understand the benefits.

Much like everything else, new ideas and new potential breakthroughs in athletic development have moved things forward since then.

Or so it may seem.

You surely have your own opinion on whether technological breakthroughs like social media, AI, and even the internet itself have made our world better or worse.

Some among us are early adopters, the ones who stand in line to get one of the first new iPhones.

Others fall on the opposite side of the spectrum, still using their old beige rotary phone to call the movie theater for show times.

The strength training world has its own range of early adopters and old warhorses, too.

The flashpoint today comes with data collection in the weight room, specifically the speed of your lifts.

The faster the better, some strength coaches will tell you.

Let's make the assumption that an emphasis on speed does not negatively impact proper form in any way.

Is lifting weights fast even a good idea?

To an extent, yes.

Exercises like the ones in the Olympics, namely cleans and snatches, require you to lift weights fast.

And they are outstanding sports performance exercises.

But they also require huge amounts of coordination, a benefit just as critical as the speed of the lift.

One that bench pressing or squatting fast doesn't offer.

Yet more and more there are youth workout programs which focus on measuring the speed of each repetition.

Burning precious time and focus towards a goal that may not even be helping all that much.

Because if you want to produce super high speed movements with load, there isn't a better exercise in the world for it than sprinting.

Your body is weight, and a simple stopwatch will tell you how fast you're moving it.

Full speed sprinting also has a massive coordination aspect.

I believe the youth sports industry is, in part, moving in a poor direction with its emphasis on Velocity Based Training, or VBT.

Kids have very little time to train around school and an ever growing sports schedule.

The 3 best things they can do for their physical development are to:

• Get really strong

• Get really fast

• Become extremely athletic/coordinated

All the best athletes in the world exhibit high levels of at least 2 of these qualities.

The best have all three.

You get really strong by lifting heavy weights, regardless of speed.

You get fast by running fast.

You build coordination by training in ways that maximally challenge your ability to rhythmically move in a wide variety of ways.

Just because you can measure something doesn't mean it should be your focus.

And just because something is new doesn't mean it's better.

Yeah that sounds like Boomer talk...but sometimes we know what we're doing.