Too much?

As a powerliftter I may be about to commit sacrilige but, strength might be overated. People sometimes impose their own bias on to others as "the way". My job as a trainer is to have my clients achieve their goals, whatever they may be. If my clients program looks like mine, then that client better have my exact goals, exercise history, injury history, mobility issues etc.

The clearest example i can think of are bodybuilding style trainers. Does their 60 something year old sweet as pie grandma client need to be doing an "arm day" or a 9th set of the third chest exercise of that day? I think a lot of this comes from ego, thinking that what we do is the best. That thinking needs to change to (maybe) what i'm doing is the best for me. Usually its more like this is the only thing i know how to do and say its the best because I do not know any better.

What about powerlifters? most trainers can agree that squatting and deadlifting are essential movements we as humans should be doing. My question is how much is too much? Just like grandma does not need flat bench; incline; decline; chest flye days, She definitely doesn't need maximal effort method front squatting. Even though increasing maximal strength will make lighter work absolutely easier, it will improve her bone mineral density, we can easily say its too much.

Grandma was an easy case, but what about young athletes? I made a friend of mine start dunking by increasing his 5rm back squat, but how much is too much? A stronger squat will improve knee stability, maybe even verticals (as my single person case study showed). Where is the line in the sand?

I overanalyze everything so I wanted to make this simpler for myself. What do I, did I do to improve performance in my sport? I practiced and drilled. I could not stop my opponent from taking my leg, so I worked on sprawling and defending the takedown. I wasn't getting to my opponents knees? thousands of shots at my drill partner or the air.

would a heavier barbell reverse lunge help me? maybe. it would/could make my step into the opponent more explosive. I had a potentially stronger split stance step, now I took this newfound explosive and did thousands more shots at an opponent or air with a stronger first step.

What I am trying to say is that if a MINIMAL amount of strength is not in the picture then strength training will improve your sport performance. If a minimal amount of strength is in place then getting stronger will give you the ability to do better when you practice, which will in turn make you better at your sport.

Train to be better at practice/ don't train to the point where it has an adverse effect on practice.
practice to be become better at your sport
compete
find a weakness
strengthen that weakness
practice as an even fitter person to be even better at your sport
repeat cycle

just my thoughts

-Jorge Unigarro