Picture a hockey player delivering a check at full speed.

Imagine a soccer player fighting for the ball with her feet while battling for position with their upper body, or a baseball player hitting a curveball 400 feet.

These examples, and many more, simultaneously require high levels of both strength and coordination.

There are many philosophical differences in the strength and conditioning world, but one of the few areas of agreement is that athletes should be using strength exercises that include a coordination component.

How much coordination is enough?

It depends on who you ask.

Many traditional strength coaches feel that you only need the basic lifts - squats, deadlifts, bench presses, Olympic lifts and chin ups - to apply the necessary dose.

Because each of these movements require 2 or more joints to move together, they feel that's enough.

Others, like Frans Bosch, believe a much greater coordination demand is necessary to develop the athleticism needed to succeed in sport.

You can check out Bosch's website here to see some of his cutting-edge drills that employ multi-directional, total-body movements done at varying speeds.

No matter which philosophy you prefer, the bottom line is that athletes should be mindful that coordination is a critical component to their strength workouts.

From that perspective, here are three strength exercises I still see many high school and college athletes doing all the time that fall way short of achieving this goal.

Partial Range Squats

Parallel squats are perhaps the best lower body strengthening exercise you can do.

The 'parallel' part simply means that you squat low enough for the top of your thighs to get parallel to the ground.

That depth requires significant coordination of all the muscles in your lower body paired with stability in your torso.

A program called BIgger, Faster, Stronger came along in the 1990's and popularized the partial range squat for high school athletes, so they could squat heavier loads.

Of course, the partial range squat eliminated the need for your hamstrings and glutes to control your descent.

Basically, it sacrifices coordination for strength.

This is fine if you are a powerlifter, competing solely to lift the most weight.

It's problematic if you want to play your sport without looking like a robot.

Parallel squats are great for athletes.

Partial squats no so much.

Leg Press

Dropping another rung lower on the coordination ladder, the leg press is still hugely popular in big box gym settings due primarily to the fact you can move massive amounts of weight.

It eliminates hip movement, though, because you're sitting on your butt.

And it removes the high levels of core stability needed in similar exercises like deadlifts and parallel squats.

Leg pressing puts all the stress squarely on the knee joints, which has almost zero application to athletics.

There is no athletic movement anywhere close to the leg press except for rowing.

For that sport it may make some sense, but for all others you're not going to see a lot of transfer to your sport.

Single Joint Isolation Lifts

Yes, I'm looking at you bicep curls!

You too, calf raises, tricep extensions, leg curls, and leg extensions.

Sleeping and watching TV have about as much coordination demands as these exercises do.

They certainly work from a bodybuilding perspective, but that's about it.

Spend all your workout time here and you can expect to lose your fluid, athletic ability down the road.

It's not easy to train like an athlete.

You've got to do the drills that are more tiring, and at times more painful.

They'll give you a greater performance advantage, though.

Hopefully you're the type that's willing to go the extra mile.