The Relationship of Sprinting Speed Performance and Strength Performance Per Unit of Body Weight

The purpose of this study was to determine whether a relationship existed between sprinting speed performance and strength performance per unit of body weight. A Non-Probability sample, consisting of twenty-nine football players from Fargo North High School was used. All subjects were tested in strength and speed performance and a correlation was made between the scores on each test. The speed performance test consisted of each subject sprinting the 40-yard dash in a series of four trials. The mode score was used to reduce timer error. All subjects ran the trials alone and started when they were ready. This was done to eliminate entering the factor of reaction time into the start. The strength performance score per unit of body weight was obtained by having each individual perform seven strength exercises which were: the bench press, military press, leg press, leg extension, leg flexion, arm curl, and latissimus pull. Each subject was scored on the maximum weight he could lift throughout one complete repetition. The weight lifted for each strength item was totaled and then divided by the individual\u27s body weight to compute the strength performance score. The Spearman Rank Order Correlation Co-efficient (Rho) was used to correlate the speed performance score and strength performance score. This value was .91, significant at the .01 level of significance. The conclusion of this study was that there was a high correlation between sprinting speed performance and strength performance per unit of body weight within this non-random sample