One of the most common questions I hear from athletes or people who participate in sports is “How do I get faster or become more explosive or powerful?”.
Developing explosive power is something that is achievable with all types of athletes, from tennis players to rugby players to track runners. One exercise can be made to fit all these profiles and give them the explosive power they are looking for.
What is Power?
First I want to break down what power actually is, power is the ability to recruit motor units into action and do it quickly. This means that you as an athlete have the ability to perform movements and exercise with the maximum amount of force in the shortest time possible. This is where the explosive part of “explosive power” comes in, as an athlete you are explosively performing these exercises with maximum effort to mirror how you would perform in your sport.
With that idea of what explosive power is let’s talk about how we can develop it.
How to Develop Explosive Power?
One massive misconception of this type of training is that you need to develop a whole new training program to make gains. One of the beautiful things about this is that you can just add some of these exercises into your current training program and you can improve these skills very quickly.
Let me tell you about some of the key exercises for this style of training.
The Skater
When preforming in sports, most of the time we perform from one foot or leg, for example running. When we look a little closer, running is an explosive movement we do from one leg to the other; the same movement we do when we are moving laterally in sports. Skaters are one of the easiest and best exercises to do to help lateral explosive power. Performing skaters will help your body adapt to lateral movement and give you that extra step when performing any type of cut or lateral movement in your sport.
The Deadlift
The Deadlift can be seen as something that people may associate with power lifting or bodybuilding but in fact is very helpful for hip explosion and speed. A lot of the power we use when performing during sports comes from the hips and glutes, so making the deadlift a part of your regular routine will help develop that hip and glute power.
Sled Exercises
One of my favorite tools to use for speed and power is the sled, it can be used in many different ways to produce great results. Sled drags, sled pull, sled push or even sled rows can all benefit you greatly to help you produce that power you want and need for sports.
The list of different sled exercises can be manipulated for the goal you want to achieve. For example if you are wanting to work on speed, keep the weight on the sled low and work on pushing and pulling the sled with speed, but if you want to put some more weight on the sled then you will be working on producing more power from your glutes. If your goal is to create more explosive power and speed, then this is something that will complement your current training program and give you gains in the right area.
These few exercises are just a few examples of what you can do to help improve your power and speed output. Adding them to your training program will help you greatly.
If you are interested in learning more please reach out to me at Stephen@phoenixacoaching.com