If you had to run the 100 meters at the highest possible speed and you could choose a pair of legs from those shown in the figure below, which one would you choose?
Here’s my take.
The first pair of legs is slim. You would have less weight to push, but also “an engine” with less power.
Maybe something to consider for a marathon, but I would discard them for a competition where we need to reach maximum speed.
Do we want a more powerful engine? The second pair could give us more power than the first, but part of that power would already be used to push the extra dead weight made of fat, which is useless for our goal.
Most likely, that extra power wouldn’t even be enough to compete with someone with slim legs, who, having less weight to push, would ultimately have more usable power.
So should we choose the last pair, the super muscular ones? I’m not sure. Not all types of muscle are the same.
They would probably have a lot of power, but at low speed. Remember that power is the product of force and velocity.
A lot of force at low speed is not what we need for a 100-meter race.
We might choose them for lifting heavy weights, but not for winning a sprint. And even in this case, a large part of the power is spent just moving the weight of the “engine” itself.
Pushing such a large muscle mass at maximum speed is not easy.
We should also consider that maintaining legs like those on the far right requires paying extreme attention to our body’s condition.
To achieve that kind of physique, it’s not enough to eat well and lift weights. You have to push your body beyond healthy limits and rely on chemical assistance.
After the initial sprint, you might even tear a ligament. Let’s leave aside the super muscular legs — at that point, I’d rather choose the slim ones.
For me, there’s no doubt. The best legs to win a 100-meter race are the third pair.
They are muscular to the right extent, have an optimal power-to-weight ratio, and don’t require extreme maintenance like the fourth pair.
The “power” of a website works in a very similar way.
But what is the “power” of a website? In physics, we said that power is the product of force and velocity, but this can also be seen as the ratio between work and time.
Forgive the small physics demonstration, but I want you to clearly understand how force × velocity is the same as work over time.
Let’s prove it.
Imagine an object moving at a constant velocity v thanks to a force F.
Power (P) is:
P = F × v
Velocity is defined as the ratio between distance traveled and time (Δt):
v = s / Δt
Substituting this into the original formula:
P = F × (s / Δt)
We can rewrite it as:
P = (F × s) / Δt
Now we introduce the definition of work (L).
In physics, work is the product of force and displacement:
L = F × s
Replacing F × s with L, we get:
P = L / Δt
Back to the web world. A very “powerful” website is a site that does its job in the shortest possible time.
Does that make sense? Yes, it does.
If the “power” of the site is properly channeled, the work it does will bring the desired results.
How to channel the power of a website requires a separate discussion. Let’s assume it is optimally channeled.
At that point, all that remains is to make our site perform the maximum amount of work in the unit of time.
So, how do we build a “powerful” website that delivers maximum results in the shortest time?
By now it should be clear: we need to power it with the third type of legs.
A site with legs that are too slim won’t deliver many results. Think about those websites with zero functionality, no images, or maybe a couple of pixelated ones.
What’s the point of such a site? “Great! My site is super lightweight and Google PageSpeed Insights gives me a score of 90!” — but what is that actually useful for?
What about the chubby legs? A “bloated” website full of unnecessary plugins, redundant code, oversized images, and features you don’t need will be slow, inefficient, and hard to maintain.
An “over-engineered, hyper-optimized” website (like the ultra muscular legs), with aggressive optimizations, complex systems, and micro-optimizations everywhere, may seem powerful, but often loses flexibility, increases the risk of bugs, and becomes difficult to manage.
You can only use its power at low speed. As soon as you try to scale the site in terms of users, products, or complexity, the problems of an overgrown system start to emerge.
So what does a properly “muscular” website look like?
An optimal website:
– uses only the necessary plugins
– runs on clean and well-structured code
– applies targeted optimizations (not obsessive)
– provides a solid foundation that ensures stability
– is easily scalable
Just like the ideal legs for running, the best website is not the most extreme one, but the most balanced.