Power Development for Athletes.
Most people are aware of the benefits of undertaking a resistance training program to increase strength to improve their athletic performance. But what if I told you, if you’re a regular gym goer, that increasing strength wasn’t the be all end all if your goal is to maximise performance in your sport? Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that being really strong (and by strong I mean being able to exert large amounts of force) isn’t important. It absolutely is. But in the context of athletic performance, unless you’re a powerlifter or body builder, I would argue that optimising power development is more important.
So what is ‘power’? Well to put it simply it’s being able to produce large amounts of force as quickly as possible and can be expressed using the following equation:
Power = Force x Velocity
From the formula above you can see that power is the product of force and velocity so it makes sense to train to be able to generate maximal amounts of force, but this is only half of the equation. The other, often more overlooked, half of the equation is velocity which refers to how fast a movement is performed.
Now if you’re not sure why velocity is a variable worth considering in your training program I’ll ask you to think about most common sporting movements; think sprinting and changing direction, jumping in basketball, throwing in baseball, striking in MMA, a golf swing… The list goes on. What do all these actions have in common? They are all performed very quickly i.e. with high velocity. And again, I want to re-iterate that improving maximum strength is still very important, but the problem with focussing ALL of your training on this trait is that velocity will always be slow because of the force-velocity trade-off. And this is just a concept that dictates if you want to produce maximal amounts of force (max strength training) velocity will be low and vice versa; high velocity = low force. This is illustrated in the graph below known as the force-velocity curve. To think about this practically think about how fast you move the bar when performing a 1RM back squat vs how fast you move performing a countermovement jump. And if all you’re doing is lifting heavy weights slowly, you’re not exposing your muscles, and allowing them to adapt, to the high velocity, powerful movements that occur in so many athletic movements which can be detrimental to your performance and place you at a greater risk of injury.
‘Can’t I keep lifting heavy weights, just faster to increase power?’ you might ask. Well, the answer would be yes; if you’re lifting the same weight but faster you will increase your power output, but this may not be the most effective method to so. The reason being that when you approach the top of your traditional resistance training movements (think squats, bench press, deadlifts) you actually have to decelerate the bar, by as much as 25% of the concentric portion. ‘Then I can I just lift lighter weights faster to increase power output, right?’ Unfortunately not quite as the issue of having to decelerate the bar towards the top of the movement is still present and can even increase to 50% of the concentric portion of the lift when lifting lighter weights.
So how can you alleviate the issue of decelerating during the concentric portion of the movement? There are two main training methods, which I’ll explain separately below, used to overcome this issue both of which do so by projecting an object into space, be it a bar, medicine ball or the body itself.
*Just as a disclaimer, there are a lot of intricacies and nuances to both training methods so for the purpose of this blog I’ll only be going into very basic introductory detail for each.
The first method is plyometric training. Examples of plyometric exercises include, but are not limited to, jumps, hops, bounds and skips and they are characterised by utilising what is known as the stretch-shortening cycle (SSC). In simple terms, the SSC involves 3 phases all of which occur very rapidly; eccentric (or lowering), amortisation (or pause at the bottom), and concentric (or upward) phases. What makes plyometric training so effective at improving power for athletic development is the utilisation of stored elastic energy in the musculo-tendon unit and, as is the nature of jumps, hops and skips, being able to project the body into free space. The ability to add weight to plyometric exercises also allows you to modify the force/ velocity nature of the exercise you’re doing.
The second method is ballistic training which is similar to plyometric training in the sense that you still project an object into space. The key difference between the two is that ballistic exercises don’t utilise the SSC and instead focus purely on an explosive concentric muscle action (without the rapid eccentric), and also don’t involve repeat contacts with a surface. You can think of a ballistic exercise as a powerful one-off effort. Even if you complete multiple reps in a set there will usually be a short rest in between reps. Examples of ballistic exercises include squat jumps, bench throws and Olympic lifting variations. There is evidence to suggest ballistic training facilitates improvements in power output through neural activation patterns including a lower threshold to recruit motor units and increased firing frequency.
Hopefully by now I’ve sold you on the importance of incorporating power specific training methods into your training program, so you might be wondering how you would go about doing so. Unfortunately, there’s not a straight forward answer as it will depend on a number of factors including previous training history, time of season (assuming you’re a competing athlete), how many days you’re in the gym and when/ how often you do more sports specific training, among others. Despite these considerations below are some GENERAL guidelines for common training variables:
- Exercise order: Complete at the beginning of the workout, following the warmup
- Sets: 3-5 (can be more or less)
- Reps: inversely correlated with intensity i.e. ↑ intensity = ↓ reps and vice versa
- Generally 3-6
- Intensity/ load: 0-80% of 1RM (depends on exercise and goals of training)
- Generally 30% of 1RM is considered optimal
- Rest: 3-5 minutes
- Tempo: Explosive (max effort)
To give a bit more context to the variables above; power-based exercises recruit type 2 fast twitch muscle fibres which are larger and capable of producing greater power outputs, but are also more fatigable (compared to type 1 fibres). For this reason its recommended power exercises are completed at the beginning of an exercise program and rest is high between sets; so there’s no carry over fatigue from exercises performed earlier or from previous sets. Intensity will depend on what the specific focus of training is, for example if the goal is to improve the velocity end of the force-velocity curve lower loads will be used, but if focussing on the strength end of the spectrum higher loads would be used. Regardless of weight used movements should always be performed explosively with maximum intent. It’s also worth noting that the intensity of plyometrics exists on a continuum and is determined by the amount of stretch and deformation caused to the musculo-tendon unit. For example pogo jumps are lower intensity compared to depth jumps. This is why rep ranges can be so variable but generally have an inverse relationship with intensity in the sense that a lower intensity exercise can be completed for more reps and vice versa. For example it’s not unreasonable to complete 20 reps of pogo jumps but you might only complete 4-5 depth jumps in a set.
Because power training places large amounts of stress on muscles, joints and connective tissue it’s important to gradually increase volume and intensity, the same way you would with any traditional strength exercise. And I know at the beginning of this blog I spoke about the importance of including higher velocity based movements into a training program to maximise power, but if you’re new to any sort of resistance training it’s actually recommended to build a base level of strength, using traditional exercises prior to undertaking more advanced training methods. The reasons for this are 1.) force is part of the power equation and so by simply increasing strength you will increase power, 2.) the greater you’re baseline level of strength, the better your musculoskeletal system will be able to tolerate the demands of power specific training, and 3.) the stronger you are the greater potential you have to generate higher power outputs.
So now you know what power is, why it’s important for athletic development and some general guidelines for how to incorporate it into your training program. GREAT! But the last little piece of the puzzle is figuring out what aspect of power you should focus on improving, force or velocity. Sometimes this will be easy. As previously mentioned, if you’re new to resistance training, you’d focus more on the force side of the equation by increasing strength. If you spend most of your training increasing max strength, you’ll prioritise the velocity side of things. But what if you’ve already done both for a considerable amount of time and you’re not sure what to do from this point? This is where testing comes into play. There are a few tests that we use here at Axis Performance to figure out what the focus of an athlete’s training should be. These include countermovement jumps and squat jumps, of which the quotient will give the eccentric utilisation ratio (EUR), as well as drop jumps to determine an athlete’s reactive strength index (RSI). Both tests measure the ability of an athlete to utilise their SSC, the former for slow SSC movements, the later for fast. The table below outlines what should be prioritised in a training program based on testing results, appropriate training methods, and examples of exercises to achieve this outcome.
And there you have it! A bit of a beginners guide to implementing training methods focussed on increasing power production.
By Chris Coman.