Sorry. Typo on the example. Assume the athlete is initially a 150 pound athlete squatting 300 pounds and becomes a 200 pound athlete squatting 450 pounds.
Anyway, the mechanism that makes him slower is the increase in bodyweight. At max V the squat loses its specificity to the relative strength the athlete needs to exhibit and no longer is a good predictor of performance.
For comparison we could instead look at vertical jump and three hypothetical athletes. All three athletes begin at 150lbs with 200 lb bench press, 300 lb squat and 400 lb deadlift. All three increase their bodyweight to 200 lbs to gain strength in one of the lifts. Athlete A now bench presses 500 lbs but his squat and deadlift are unchanged. Athlete B now squats 600 lbs but his bench and deadlift are unchanged. Athlete C now deadlifts 750 lbs but his squat and bench are unchanged. Which athlete is mostly likely to have increased his vertical jump? Most would answer B is most likely and A is least likely and C is somewhere in the middle. That's because the strength exhibited in the squat (not necessarily the lift itself - A VERY IMPORTANT DISTINCTION) is very specific to vertical jump, while the deadlift is less specific and the bench is the least specific. Athlete A did gain relative strength (as shown by bench) but most would not expect this to transfer to his vertical jump.
If you followed the previous example you can think of the relationship of achieving and holding max V and squatting as similar to the relationship between vertical jump and bench press or deadlift. This is why gaining weight is such a poor idea for sprinters.
The good thing is for clean athletes who don't go on stupid "bulking" diets you usually won't gain much more than 5lbs or so in a year. So for most non-elite athletes an increase in strength in any compound lift usually has a positive or at worst neutral effect on performance. When this is really a problem is when an athlete decides the need to "bulk" to gain strength and muscle and eats in excess and gains a large amount of fat, a small amount of muscle, and a moderate amount of strength.
Thanks again for your thoughts. I understand the reasoning now and want to comment on some of it and what it implicates to me as a layman in terms of track.
From what I understand you are basically saying that top end speed is the biggest determinant of success for a sprinter and at the same time responds the worst to training in general and responds probably not at all to increases in relative squat strength, except maybe for complete beginners, because it is that unspecific. You also give advice that a sprinter should never gain bodyweight because it slows down his maximum velocity. Assuming what was said initially was true for all cases I see no controversy regarding that argument. However it bears one of two implications that I will outline now:
A) If increases in bodyweight, no matter the composition of it, influences a sprinters V max and therefore his overall time that negatively, regardless of the squat specific strength gained in the process, than it logically follows that a decrease in bodyweight would have a positive influence on V max and his overall performance, regardless of squat specific strength lost during that process. UNLESS:
B) You for some reason assume that the bodyweight an athlete has is by some mechanism optimal and an increase OR decrease in bodyweight would both have negative influence.
Which one do you think is the case? If you believe A) is, then why are SOME elite sprinters not even lighter? Is Usain Bolt the lightest he can be at a competition weight of 190 lbs or could he be lighter and therefore [sic] faster? And if B) reflects your opinion, how can this be?
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