Olympic lifts involve very high power outputs, high rates of force production and large amounts of muscular coordination, including the combination of ankle, knee and hip extension.
When properly executed, the snatch and the clean and jerk are two of my favorite dynamic and explosive exercises for enhancing power in endurance athletes, but they do require a good bit of instruction to learn, and can be associated with an increased risk of exercise if performed improperly. If you already know how to be doing Olympic lifts, then you should be doing them, and if not, look to a resource such as Dan John , or a local qualified weightlifting coach to teach you correct form.
But you don't have to know the snatch and the clean and jerk to get the benefits of speed-strength training. Other ballistic, explosive exercises that don't involve quite as much coaching or as steep a learning curve, include:. Yes, that can be tough for the go-go mentality of an endurance athlete, but you literally do a lift explosively with perfect form, set the bar down, walk away, come back and do the lift again.
If you're accustomed to high rep, medium weight, bodybuilding or Crossfit style weight training, this may seem much different than what you're used to, but this is what it takes to maximize power production. These type of workouts should begin to replace traditional strength workouts the closer you get to your race and the plan you'll get access to as part of this book will show you exactly how to structure your season for proper workout timing.
You may have already been aware of the benefits of plyometric exercises and explosive weightlifting just described. But it is slightly less well known that combining traditional strength and explosive exercises results in greater muscle fiber recruitment and even faster improvements in power and rate of force development 1. Examples of Complex Training include:. The difference between the type of strength sets that you perform in a Complex Training vs. For example, you go heavy on the first set, rest briefly, then progress to the next set, then finally rest long and I'm a big fan of maximizing your time and doing the mobility work that I will be discussing later in this chapter during those rest periods.
For example:. Just like power workouts, Complex Training should be used more than traditional strength training as you get closer to your race. When it comes to power, the most important consideration from a food standpoint is the support of your nervous system, since the speed with which your nerves communicate will directly influence the speed of your brain speaking to your muscles, and vice versa.
The three best ways to accomplish this are via omega-3 fatty acid intake, amino acid intake and B-complex vitamin intake. Your nerves are wrapped in sheaths called myelin sheaths, and a diet for power should be comprised of specific nutrients that support the formation of these myelin sheaths, and also the health of the nervous system as a whole.
The reason I recommend omega-3 fatty acids especially docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA is because they are particularly important in building these sheath structures surrounding nerves Flax seeds and walnuts are excellent sources of omega-3 fatty acids, but the amount of DHA actually absorbed from seeds and nuts is relatively low. Very good sources of more readily available omega-3 fatty acids include salmon, sardines, cloves, grass-fed beef, halibut, shrimp, cod, tuna, kale, collard greens, and winter squash.
In addition, activity in your nerves is carried out with special messaging molecules called neurotransmitters — and in most cases, these neurotransmitters are amino acids or derivatives of amino acids 8.
For this reason, optimal protein intake along with balanced intake of amino acids from food or supplement sources can also be very helpful in supporting your nervous system. Some of the best high amino acid protein sources for your nervous system include grass-fed beef, wild salmon, eggs from pastured chickens, raw organic dairy, almond and almond butter, quinoa, and spirulina or chlorella sources. You'll learn much more about the best protein sources for endurance athletes in the nutrient density section of the nutrition part of this book.
Finally, in order for the nervous system to synthesize and circulate these neurotransmitters, you need to have adequate intake of B complex vitamins, and Vitamins B6, B12, and folate are especially important in nerve metabolism Excellent food sources of vitamin B6 include bell peppers, turnip greens, and spinach; excellent sources of folate include spinach, parsley, broccoli, beets, turnip and mustard greens, asparagus, romaine lettuce, calf's liver, and lentils, and excellent sources of B12 include calf's liver and snapper.
The following are my top recommended supplements for building power as quickly as possible, and most are based on the same nervous system supporting philosophy as my food recommendations. As soon as you take it, choline makes its way to the brain and increases focus, muscle contractibility, and even memory formation allowing you to form new neural circuits for learning complex activities such as multi-joint lifts.
Interestingly, when you take it in lower doses throughout the day which would be fine to do by simply including choline rich foods such as walnuts, fish and eggs the choline is used for methyl donation, which is enormously important for sustaining your metabolism throughout the day, and the combo of this and the brain benefits are why choline supplementation is one of the most highly recommended supplements to slow or reverse the neurological decline associated with aging In some studies, choline has been linked to increased endurance performance.
I personally get my daily dose of choline from the Chinese adaptogenic herb complex TianChi. L-tyrosine is a naturally occurring amino acid that is the precursor to the neurotransmitter adrenaline also known as epinephrine.
So L-tyrosine is not only able to increase levels of adrenaline in the body quite handy prior to a power workout , but can also protect neurons from free radical based oxidation by embedding itself in the cell membrane and acting as an anti-oxidant 4. Brands vary. Although all of these catechins share similar brain-boosting properties, EGCG appears to be most potent for elevated brain and neuronal activity 5.
Because of the high amount of brewed green tea you'd need to drink prior to a workout to get the equivalent of mg EGCG a rough rule of thumb is that one cup of green tea contains only about 50mg of EGCG , I'm a fan of edible green tea , which you can simply grab out of a bag and munch on prior to a workout.
There are several forms of Vitamin B that are helpful for power development. Niacin niacinamide has been shown to help maintain normal function of nerves. Vitamin B6 pyridoxine HCl is necessary for the production of the neurotransmitters dopamine, serotonin, noradrenaline, and adrenaline, and plays an essential role in healthy nervous system function and energy production.
Folate folic acid is essential for proper brain function. Vitamin B12 cyanocobalamin is the most potent of the Vitamin B complex. It maintains a healthy nervous system by helping to maintain the myelin sheath that insulates your nerve fibers, and has been shown to help heal nerve damage.
Finally, pantothenic acid d-calcium pantothenate plays a key role in helping maintain precise communication between your central nervous system and brain, which is crucial to functions such as powerful muscle contractions and reaction speed. I personally use a supplement called Lifeshotz to get a full Vitamin B dose in one convenient packet although I tend to more often take this prior to swim workouts because of the antioxidant effect against chlorine. Incidentally, for a cool little self-test to determine whether or not a food or supplement is having an effect on your nervous system, you can try the CNS Tap Test phone app to track nervous system performance.
If you're serious about building power, you'll also want to to have proper gear around for plyometric and speed-strength training. Here are some of my top power gear recommendations many gyms actually this stuff lying around under-utilizing in a dark corner somewhere. You can usually snag power racks for a decent deal off Craigslist — and if your gym doesn't have a single power rack, you should consider finding a new gym. Athletes such as tennis and soccer players, who rely on speed, quick movement and ability to change direction at the last second are not the only individuals who can benefit from agility ladder workouts and drills.
Because of the ability of agility ladders to teach you reduced ground contact time and increase your explosiveness from ground contact, endurance athletes can benefit from these too.
Here's a good, free list of agility ladder drills to get you started. You simply can't build much power without a little space to train, and some elevated surfaces to jump on and off. If a weight vest is too heavy, you'll slow your pace down too much, and then your weighted vest workouts become more of a strength or endurance routine — and there are more efficient methods to build strength and endurance.
Use a vest that fits tight to your body and allows you to move quickly without the vest bouncing around on your chest and back.
Similar to a weight vest, you don't need a heavy load, just a light load that you can move quickly. If you don't have a sled, you can put a few weight plates on a towel and push them from one end of a hard surface like a basketball court to the other.
This specific brand of cable is the most powerful resistance cable you can get, and you can change from one cable resistance to three cable resistance in just a few seconds.
So, if you are using the lightest cable, you can go from 10 to 20 to 30 lbs of resistance in seconds and for the heaviest cables you can go from to lbs of resistance in seconds. These are good for resisted sprints and explosive upper body work. So this section of the chapter will go fast, pun intended. Let's go back to the definition of power, in case you need a quick review: power is the ability to generate high amounts of force over a short period of time.
Speed is force independent. As long as you do something quickly, then congratulations — you're speedy. In this case, you were able to move your hand over a set distance in a very short period of time. A perfect example of a training protocol for increasing speed is the Overspeed Training you learned about in Chapter 3.
So during speed training, your brain learns how to fire faster and control your muscles more efficiently at higher speeds, and you also develop more powerful and quick muscle fiber contractions, which comes in handy for hard surges during a race or tough workout 3.
Ideally, by learning how to move your body parts quickly, you can also move your entire body over a set distance in a very short period of time. And from a muscle efficiency and recruitment standpoint, you've already learned why this is important, even if you're a marathoner and not a m sprinter. Training strategies for increasing speed go hand-in-hand with strategies for maximizing power production, with the caveat that you need even less weight than you need for power training.
You simply get reduced benefits from adding external loads like heavy vests and heavy weights, as they diminish your ability to maintain a high turnover and to maximize neuromuscular recruitment. In addition to keeping loads light enough to where you can move your body or body parts as quickly as possible, the other crucial rules for speed training are:.
Your neuromuscular system is very fatigue prone, and, similar to power training, needs not to have been exhausted by a hard endurance training workout or strength workout earlier in the day. So a set of fast downhill overspeed runs at the end of a long marathon training protocol is not a good idea but doing them before your long run would be a perfect way to prime your nervous system for faster leg turnover.
One of the biggest mistakes most coaches make with speed training is the timing, and even for team sports like football, basketball, and soccer, speed work is often done at the end of the practice, when the neuromuscular system is already fatigued. If you want to breathe hard, do metabolic work, or train your cardiovascular system, then go do swimming, cycling, running, rowing or any of form of interval training.
Speed simply requires brief doses of low volume, fast work. If you're exhausting yourself metabolically, it becomes very difficult to train your nervous system. If you're not forced to be thinking hard during a speed workout, it's probably not challenging your nervous system.
This is why overspeed training on a bicycle is not done at 80 or 90rpm. For sample speed workouts, simply refer back to the overspeed section of Chapter 3. Medicine ball slams are a great upper-body exercise. Start with the ball directly overhead.
Swing the arms downward to slam the ball into the ground as forcefully as possible. The core is forced to react quickly to stabilize the effort and the shoulders perform movement dynamically. Similar to a jump, the kettlebell swing works wonders towards developing the posterior chain. Commonly performed improperly, the swing is not a squat but rather a hip hinge. To get it right, bend at the hips, and then forcefully contract the glutes and hamstrings to thrust the bell forward.
On the descent, brace the core, hinge at the hips, and recoil for another explosive contraction. The rotational throw is perfect for developing power in the transverse plane.
Used by many athletes, this throw helps with core stabilization, hip power, and shoulder strength. Stand perpendicular to a wall with an underhand grip on the ball, twist at the hips away from the wall, and then rotate through the hips to throw the ball at the wall as hard as possible. Catch the rebound and repeat. Load up the prowler and perform short sprints. This not only develops starting speed for sprinters and athletes, but also adds strength to deadlifts and squats.
With consistent use of this medieval piece of metal, you might just add a little mass to those bird legs. Perform power movements early in the workout following a proper warm-up and complete sets of reps. Lower-body power exercises should be performed on lower body days and upper body power movements during upper body training sessions. Try this three-day split:. Already have a Bodybuilding. Sign In.
Don't risk doing a workout improperly! Avoid injury and keep your form in check with in-depth instructional videos. View our enormous library of workout photos and see exactly how each exercise should be done before you give it a shot. Quickly read through our step-by-step directions to ensure you're doing each workout correctly the first time, every time.
He believes in training hard and heavy. View all articles by this author. Day 1: Lower Body - Squat Focus. Warm-up Superset. Barbell Squat. What comes with BodyFit? Instructional Videos Don't risk doing a workout improperly! Its popularity has stemmed from its simplicity, flexibility, and ability to be run over and over for long periods of time.
It favors slow, steady, repeatable progression over the long term instead of programs that pile on the weight for a few weeks or months before progress grinds to a halt. It has a fair amount of heavy singles followed by back off volume and accessories. It looks like a lot of fun to run.
These are tried and true fully body training plans that will help you get stronger by exposing you to heavy weights and letting you add weight on a regular basis and build muscle.
Ivysaur is another solid pick. Intermediate level lifters may benefit from training 4 or 5 days per week in order to achieve the necessary stimulus to disrupt homeostasis and induce adaptation in the necessary muscle groups. It really depends on how the program is designed and what its goals are. Often times a powerlifting program is associated with a peaking program, which specifically aims to increase the one rep max on the squat, bench press, and deadlift. A strength program is less likely to focus on peaking.
It also may focus less on strict competition lifts and may incorporate more variations of those lifts, like front squats, incline bench press, Romanian deadlifts, etc. Of course, all of those lifts can be used to help increase powerlifting performance too.
At the end of the day, every powerlifting program is a strength program, but not every strength program may be ideal for powerlifting. Home » Programs » Strength Training Program.
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