Velocity Based Training Zones Explained
Let’s talk about the VBT training zones! Dr. Bryan Mann, shares his velocity based training table that includes all the velocity ranges in the strength speed continuum. He originally created the velocity zones based on the data he collected from Division 1 athletes. Above is the VBT chart you’re looking for.
By Bryan Mann
Over the past several years, Velocity Based Training (VBT) has been coming to the forefront as an innovative way to determine load for strength training. Many people have developed novel approaches for the implementation of this technology. This has led to a “Wild West” of sorts for the nomenclature used to describe the diverse traits that are developed at the different velocities. We will attempt to sort this out to give a common nomenclature based off of the existing literature that has been produced on this topic.
Overall, the traits developed utilizing Velocity Based Training concentrically with average velocity can be categorised into different velocity zones.
Learn more from Bryan Mann – who was the first to come up with the name velocity based training – by watching his webinar via this link.
The Velocity Zones
In this article, mean velocities will be discussed. That is because mean velocity is a more stable measure for most exercises, compared to mean propulsive velocity or peak velocity. Exceptions are Olympic lifts and jumps, which are often better measured in peak velocity, due to the large amount of time that is actually spent decelerating the bar (2).
Every lift sits somewhere on a spectrum from very heavy and very slow, to very light and very fast. This spectrum is divided into five training zones, each associated with a load range (as a percentage of 1RM), a velocity range, and a distinct physical quality. Understanding these zones allows a coach to design training that transfers directly to the specific demands of a sport, rather than training strength in the abstract.
The velocity based training, training zones:
1. Absolute strength
Load/velocity range: 80-100% of 1RM, at velocities below 0.5 m/s.
- The ability to exert force maximally. Generally trained to improve maximal strength.
- Trained with very heavy loads where the maximum achievable velocity is 0.5m/s or less.
- Examples: Compound and strength based exercises like bench press, squat and deadlift.
Absolute strength is basically what it sounds like: the ability to exert force maximally and moving towards increasing the 1RM. There is some variation that exists between exercises when an athlete is achieving a 1RM which seems to be based on the amplitude of motion. According to Gonzalez-Badillo (3), the 1RM is approached at around .3m/s for the squat and around .15m/s with the bench press. From this bottom range, absolute strength is developed until around .5m/s.
Sport example: Rugby union, engaging in a scrum
A scrum is a static, near-isometric contest, eight players locked against eight players, driving into a stationary or slow-moving mass for several seconds at a time. There is almost no velocity in a scrum. What decides the contest is raw force output against near-zero displacement: the ability to produce and hold more force than the opposition for longer.
That is why Absolute Strength training (heavy back squats, deadlifts, and sled pushes at 80-100% 1RM, under 0.5 m/s) transfers directly. The prop or lock is not training to move fast. They are training their nervous system and muscle fibres to produce maximal force under conditions that closely resemble the sporting action itself: heavy, slow, and grinding.
Also seen in:
- Powerlifting and strongman. The sport itself is the zone, competition lifts are by definition near-maximal and slow.
- Offensive line in American football. Drive blocking against a stacked defensive line involves the same low-velocity, high-force contest as a rugby scrum.
- Judo or wrestling clinch battles. The static strength phase before a throw or takedown, where competitors are locked and grinding for positional control.
- Olympic weightlifting, the drive off the floor. The initial pull under near-maximal load in a heavy clean or snatch is genuinely in the Absolute Strength velocity range.
Coaching application: Prioritise this zone with athletes whose sport involves sustained, near-maximal force production against an opponent or load with little to no displacement.
2. Accelerative strength
Load/velocity range: 65-80% of 1RM, at velocities between 0.5 m/s and 0.75 m/s.
- Moving heavier loads as fast as possible. Observed in sports/movements like blocking in a scrimmage.
- Trained with heavy loads where maximum achievable velocity is around 0.5m/s to 0.75 m/s.
- Examples: Compound and strength based exercises like bench press, squat, split squat, bench pull and deadlift.
The next velocity zone in the strength speed continuum is called accelerative strength. While this may create a mental picture of a runner moving down the track at increasing velocity, this is not the case. Bosco defined it as driving against a heavy load as fast as possible (8). It is more akin to trying to dominate a driving rugby scrum, or an opponent on the line in American football. These velocities are from around .5m/s to .75m/s.
Sport Example: Ice hockey, the initial strides off a faceoff or breakaway start
A hockey forward’s first two or three strides accelerating from a dead stop to chase a loose puck or beat a defender to open ice produce the biggest ground reaction forces in skating. The skater’s leg drives against significant resistance, but unlike a scrum this is not a static hold, it is a heavy, deliberate drive that must translate into forward motion.
Training this zone with heavy trap bar deadlifts, back squats, or hip thrusts at this load and velocity range builds the specific quality a hockey player needs in that first push: force applied quickly enough to create acceleration, but under a load heavy enough to still be a strength stimulus rather than a pure speed one.
Also seen in:
- Rugby league or union, the defensive line rush. Players start from a near-stationary line and explode forward into contact, a heavy-load, building-speed profile.
- American football, a lineman’s first step off the snap. The initial punch and drive off the ball is heavier and slower than a skill player’s sprint start, but still involves real acceleration.
- Track cycling, the first pedal strokes from a standing start. The rider pushes an enormous gear at very low cadence, generating high force while beginning to build speed.
- Judo or wrestling, driving through into a throw. The transition from a static clinch into the explosive finish of a technique often passes through this exact zone.
Coaching application: This zone bridges raw force capacity and usable, game-speed power, prioritise it for athletes whose sport requires a heavy first push into acceleration.
3. Strength-speed
Load/velocity range: 40-60% of 1RM, at velocities between 0.75 m/s and 1.0 m/s.
- Moderately heavy weight as fast as possible.
- Trained at loads where the maximum achievable velocity is around 0.75m/s to 1.0m/s.
- Examples: Compound and strength based exercises like bench press, squat, split squat, bench pull and deadlift.
Strength-speed , which is defined as moving a moderately heavy weight as fast as possible (i.e., moderate loads at moderate velocities) was found in to exist at .75-1.0m/s (4-6) (10). Multiple researchers each used a different word to explain the same thing but since the Roman text (10) was published the earliest, its terminology is followed.
Sport Example: Basketball, driving off the dribble past a defender
A player’s first hard step and drive past a defender off the dribble involves moderate force output relative to a max effort, but it has to happen fast. There is no time to grind through a heavy, deliberate push, the player pushes off one leg with real intent and gets their body moving at pace almost immediately.
Training this zone with moderate load jump squats, trap bar jumps, or moderately loaded split squats builds the ability to generate force fast enough to create real movement speed, without being so light that it becomes pure speed training with no strength carryover.
Also seen in:
- Soccer, a winger’s acceleration into open space. The push off is quicker and lighter than a scrum or a lineman’s drive, but still carries meaningful force behind each stride.
- Tennis, the split step and first lateral push. The load is bodyweight and moderate, but the movement needs to happen at real speed to cover court distance in time.
- Boxing or MMA, the step behind a lead hook or takedown entry. The lower body pushes off with moderate force to generate speed into the strike or shot.
- Netball or handball, the crossover step. Moderate force applied quickly to create separation from a defender.
Coaching application: This is the zone where ‘fast but still strong’ movements live, most change of direction, first step, and separation actions in field and court sports.
4. Speed-strength
Load/velocity range: 20-40% of 1RM, at velocities between 1.0 m/s and 1.3 m/s.
- Moving as fast as possible under load. It is the trait exhibited when speed is the first priority and strength the second.
- Trained with relatively light weights where the maximum achievable velocity is between 1.0m/s and 1.3m/s.
- Examples: Cleans, weighted jumps, repeated jumps and weighted throws, banded exercises.
Speed-strength is the next trait and includes velocities ranging from about 1.0 to 1.3 meters per second, depending on the amplitude of motion (4-6)(10). The Olympic lifts may have a much higher velocity as the bar has to move much farther. Dr Harry Banyard created seperate velocity zones for Olympic lifts:
Velocity zones for Olympic lifts like the power clean
Dr Banyard also created separate velocity zones for Olympic lifts like the power clean. Learn everything about velocity zones and Olympic lifts.
Speed-strength can be best defined as speed in conditions of strength, or speed being the first priority and strength being the second. In essence, it is utilizing lighter loads at very fast velocities.
Speed-strength is often used in power training, which doesn’t mean it’s the only way to improve muscular power.
Sport Example: Track and field, the drive phase out of the blocks
A 100m sprinter’s drive phase, the first three to five steps out of the blocks, is effectively the body being projected forward as the load. Each leg is still pushing against real resistance, a light load in the load-velocity sense, but the whole point of the movement is to generate near-maximal speed as fast as possible.
Training this zone with lightly loaded jump squats, loaded sprints, or bounding drills builds the ability to project force into fast, ballistic movement, where the emphasis is on velocity, but there is still enough load present to keep a strength component in the stimulus.
Also seen in:
- Volleyball, the approach and jump into a spike. The three-step approach loads the legs briefly, but the action must happen fast enough to maximise jump height.
- Long jump, the final steps into the takeoff board. A similar profile to a sprint drive phase, light relative load, but movement needs to happen at near top speed.
- Cricket, a fast bowler’s run-up into the delivery stride. The body accelerates through the approach, with the back leg driving into the crease at pace.
- Swimming, the start off the blocks. A fast, near-maximal-speed push against the blocks with the swimmer’s own bodyweight as the load.
Coaching application: This zone sits just below pure speed work, still carrying a force component, but heavily biased toward velocity.
Strength speed vs speed strength
Strength-speed and speed-strength, have been confused and misunderstood over the years. Bosco’s original continuum had them merged in a non-quantifiable % of 1RM zone due to the overlap and variation between different people. More recently, multiple research teams, working independently, used velocity to separate the two zones.
Peak power is normally achieved roughly within the Speed Strength and Strength Speed zones. To simplify the velocity zones further, these two zones could jointly be considered a Power training zone.
5. Starting strength
Load/velocity range: Bodyweight, at velocities above 1.3 m/s, from a static starting position.
- The ‘ability to overcome inertia from a dead stop’ (Bondarchuk 2014).
- Trained using very light weight or body weight where the maximum achievable velocity is from 1.3m/s up to around 1.6m/s.
- Examples: Jumps, throws and some Olympic lifts where a higher velocity is needed to complete the lift.
The final trait is starting-strength, which is also a commonly misunderstood concept. Starting-strength is not developed with deadlifts, Anderson squats, bottom up, or bench press. These are actually building absolute strength in a solely concentric manner. According to Anatoliy Bondarchuk (1), starting-strength definition is the ability to rapidly overcome inertia from a dead stop. This means that it is an extremely high velocity with very light weights. Starting-strength is trained when the bar is moved from 1.3 to approximately 1.6 m/s, again dependent upon amplitude of motion (1).
Sport Example: Volleyball, an unweighted vertical block jump from a static stance
A volleyball blocker reacting to a set and jumping straight up from a stationary position at the net has no approach step. The blocker reads the set and must produce near-instant force to get off the ground as fast and as high as possible.
Training this zone with squat jumps from a static stance, depth drops into an immediate jump, or reactive bodyweight plyometrics builds the nervous system’s ability to fire fast and hard with no run-up to help, pure rate of force development from zero.
Also seen in:
- Sprinting, the very first movement out of the blocks. The initial extension against the blocks from a completely static position, before any real velocity has built up.
- Basketball, a standing vertical jump for a rebound or block. No approach, just a stationary player reacting and exploding upward.
- Boxing, a first punch thrown from a static guard. No pre-loaded step, just an immediate, fast strike from a stationary stance.
- Goalkeeping, a diving save from a set position. The goalkeeper is static until the shot is struck, then must generate maximal speed instantly to reach the ball.
Coaching application: This zone underpins reactive, first-movement quality, how fast an athlete can go from completely still to moving at speed.
Applying the Framework
The five zones are not independent boxes, they sit on a continuous spectrum, and most sporting actions draw on more than one zone across the course of a single movement. A rugby scrum is Absolute Strength throughout, but a heavy clean pull moves from Accelerative Strength off the floor into Speed-Strength at the top. Programming for a given sport means identifying which zone (or zones) the decisive moment of that sport’s key actions falls into, and building training that targets it directly.
- Identify the decisive action in the sport (a scrum engagement, a first step, a jump, a strike).
- Estimate where that action sits on the load-velocity spectrum (heavy and slow through to bodyweight and explosive).
- Prescribe training in that same zone, using VBT to confirm the athlete is training at the intended velocity, not just the intended weight.
- Track velocity over time at fixed loads to monitor whether the targeted quality is actually improving.
Why use VBT speed zones?
Since you are reading this, you are probably already interested in utilizing Velocity Based Training with a measurement unit such as the GymAware. While there have long been % of 1RM zones used for making improvements in different traits such as strength and power, there are similar corresponding zones for making improvements in those same traits with velocities. If this sounds familiar, it may be because it is an adaptation of the original Bosco Strength Continuum as explained at the 2005 CSCCa National Conference (8).
While the percents are still valid, without measuring velocity, it is not possible to determine objectively if the weight is being moved at the appropriate load for that given day, as strength is quite variable from day to day. Also, since we have all spent plenty of time in the gym, we know that there are some days that you’ve got it and some days you don’t. Some days the weights feel light; some days they feel heavy.
This is essentially because our nervous system is never constant. In their review paper from the Australian Strength and Conditioning Association, Jovanovic and colleagues’ (7) used formulas by Jidovtseff (6) to estimate a daily 1RM through the load-velocity profile. They noted an approximately 18% difference above and below the previously tested 1RM, meaning that there is a 36% range around the previously tested 1RM.
For example, if you had 80% of the 1RM listed for that day, the actual relative load may be 98%, which would be way too heavy for that day, or it could be as light as 62%. This is why some days we feel strong in the weight room and some days we don’t. The absolute load is not the same relative intensity that we had pre-selected. We wanted the 80% based on the previously tested 1RM, but today that prescribed 80% is actually 98% of the individual’s capability for that day, so it’s way too heavy.
By utilizing Velocity Based Training, we can eliminate this issue.
Linear Relationship in speed strength continuum
Research by Gonzalez-Badillo (3) found a near perfect relationship between percentage of 1RM and the corresponding velocity on the individual’s velocity profile. This means that when the individual tested their 1RM, their velocity at the corresponding percents of 1RM always stays the same.
For instance, if an individual squats 240lbs at .8m/s and their max is 400lbs, that equates to 60% of 1RM. Now, after that person becomes stronger and had a max of 500lbs, the 240lbs would end up being moved much more quickly, more likely being around 1.0m/s. This is because the 240lbs is no longer 60% and instead it is now about 45%. Further, to move at .8m/s would require 300lbs (the “new” 60%). While the individual’s strength level changed and the weights used changed, the corresponding % of 1RM did not.
Why does this even matter?
By understanding the corresponding velocity, or even more simply the trait that is to be developed, the proper load can be selected for that given day. It does not matter what the % of the 1RM is supposed to be for that day, because by utilizing a prescribed velocity, the individual will automatically be at the appropriate load. Now, as we had previously mentioned, the velocities fit in line well with the original Bosco Strength Continuum. From lightest to heaviest, the continuum is as follows: 0-15 is neurological and untrainable, 15-40% is starting strength, 40-60% is non-quantifiable, 65-75% is accelerative strength, and 80-100% is absolute strength (8).
There has been some confusion in interpreting the non-quantifiable range. Some have thought that this meant that there was no trait that you could develop from those intensities, which is simply not the case. Instead, because it was difficult to differentiate between strength-speed and speed-strength, there wasn’t a definitive cutoff by % of 1RM and a great amount of overlap existed between the two and the term non-quantifiable was used. As we will discuss later, these two traits are in fact separate and can easily be discerned by velocity. A major advantage of Velocity Based Training is the discernibility of traits from the continuum.
The Strength Continuum
One thing that is quite interesting to me is that the use of the traits by velocity fit seamlessly with Bosco’s Strength Continuum zones that were set all of those years ago. The use of velocity will aid in the selection of training load because the 1RM is so variable and the velocity relationship to % of 1RM is stable.
These numbers are only guidelines. Some individuals may be moving a bit slower or faster than this, and that’s ok; we are looking for the average. For instance, I was collecting data on a football player, and his maximal squat was .19m/s but, we read in previous studies that an athlete is typically moving the bar at .3m/s on maximal squat attempts. Regardless of any guidelines and rules that are determined, there will always be outliers and exceptions to the rule. The key is to realize who the exceptions are and why they are occurring and not to disregard the rules.
Specificity is key to training.
You must be moving the appropriate load at the appropriate velocity to develop the desired trait (9).
The use of devices such as the GymAware not only give you crucial feedback, they are the way to ensure that you are training the appropriate traits and will thus see the desired outcomes of training. Additionally, the GymAware will capture and collect all of the data for you. As a function of the reports, the GymAware can also give you a predicted 1RM for any given day. With this already done and accounted for, it enables you to examine trends in the loads lifted at the various velocity zones over time to assess progress. Some people get lucky and get the results they desire, I’d always rather be right than lucky.
For more information on Velocity Based Training, checkout my free webinar.
References:
1. Bondarchuk AP. Olympian Manual for Strength & Size. USA: Ultimate Athlete Concepts, 2014.
2. Cronin JB, McNair PJ, and Marshall RN. Force-velocity analysis of strength-training techniques and load: implications for training strategy and research. Journal of strength and conditioning research / National Strength & Conditioning Association 17: 148-155, 2003.
3. González-Badillo JJ and Sánchez-Medina L. Movement velocity as a measure of loading intensity in resistance training. International journal of sports medicine 31: 347-352, 2010.
4. Jandacka D, Beremlijski, P. Determination of Strength Exercise Intensities Based on the Load-Power-Velocity Relationship. Journal of Human Kinetics: 11, 2011.
5. Jidovtseff B, Croisier JL, Lhermerout C, Serre L, Sac D, and Crielaard JM. The concept of iso-inertial assessment: Reproducibility analysis and descriptive data. Isokinetics & Exercise Science 14: 53-62, 2006.
6. Jidovtseff B, Quièvre J, Hanon C, and Crielaard JM. Inertial muscular profiles allow a more accurate training loads definition. Les profils musculaires inertiels permettent une définition plus précise des charges d’entraînement 24: 91-96, 2009.
7. . Rearched Applications of Velocity Based Strength Training. Journal of Australian Strength and Conditioning 21: 11, 2014.
8. Morris B. Presented at Collegiate Strength & Conditioning Coaches Association, Salt Lake City, UT, 2005
9. National Strength & Conditioning Association. Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2000.
10. Roman RA. The Training of the Weightlifter. Moscow: Sportivny Press, 1986.