Hi,
Increasing an athlete’s cross sectional area (CSA) is extremely important for sports requiring absolute strength such as shotput, although in sports where you have to overcome your own body’s resistance this can become a problem. An example is the 100m sprint, essentially sprinting is the ability to produce large amounts of force in to the ground relative to one’s body weight. Yes increasing your CSA would mean the sprinter could increase the force they produce, but they would need to now overcome a heavier body mass meaning the extra CSA would be pointless.
Every sport is really on a continuum of how much size one needs, every athlete wants to maximise their strength, but size is sport and position dependent. In contact sports like rugby although the extra CSA will slow you down, it will help you in every contact situation like tackling, taking a hit up, etc, and therefore is an important element to have and will vary in how big you need to be depending on your position and playing style. Another example is AFL where you need to run such large distances, the size you build may help in contact but it will also fatigue you much faster over those large distances, but could be useful if you are playing certain positions like full forward.
I think this is overlooked by a lot of people training for sport where they all do a large volume phase without considering the potential costs of doing so. You really have to consider your position and requirements. Lets focus on NFL, a wide receiver wants to be extremely fast so should focus on maximum strength and power while trying to limit additional hypertrophy as this will decrease their relative strength, whereas an offensive lineman needs to be huge therefore hypertrophy training is extremely important.
I just felt like going on a rant, if anyone as a different opinion or questions please hit me up. Cheers
