Power output beats 1RM as a predictor of sport performance

The case for tracking power rather than just chasing a bigger 1RM, in one chart. Loturco and colleagues measured three things in the gym on elite sprinters — 1RM squat, peak bar power on the squat, and peak bar power on the jump squat — then correlated each against five field tests.

How to read this chart

Each cluster is one field test. Taller bars mean a stronger relationship between the gym measure and performance on that test.

Bar power out-correlates 1RM on every one of the five tests. Not marginally, either — on the two jump tests the gap is roughly 0.4 correlation units, which is the difference between a relationship you’d act on and one you wouldn’t.

The 5 m sprint is the interesting one. The 1RM bar goes below the line: the stronger squatters in this group were, if anything, slightly slower over 5 m. Treat a single negative correlation in one study as a curiosity rather than a finding, but it does undercut the assumption that more absolute strength is always more speed.

What it doesn’t say

It doesn’t say strength is irrelevant. These are elite sprinters — a population that already has a strength base, tested across a narrow range of it. Correlations shrink when the sample is homogeneous, and this one is about as homogeneous as it gets. Run the same study on untrained athletes and 1RM would almost certainly look better, because there’d be genuinely weak people in the sample dragging the low end.

What it does say is that once athletes are strong, how fast they can express that strength separates them, and 1RM stops telling you much. That’s the population where power tracking earns its place.

The two power measures are close enough across most tests that ranking them against each other is reading noise. Either is a better bet than the 1RM.