As an athlete, your training routine is going to look different than a program designed for those in the general population, because we’re training for high levels of athletic performance.
There are specific things that we need to make sure we incorporate to develop the explosive power that’s necessary for almost any sport.
And we’re going to list out three methods to develop that explosive power.
Olympic Lifts
If we’re looking for movements in the gym that can help us train multiple athletic traits at once, Olympic weightlifting exercises like the snatch and the clean & jerk are unmatched.
Successfully completing these movements require a tremendous amount of speed and coordination across multiple muscle groups.
And as athletes, our schedules can be packed, so another pro of Olympic lifts is that we can train multiple skills with one movement.
We’re talking strength, power, speed, coordination and mobility to name a few.
Plyometrics
The goal of plyometric movements Is to decrease the time it takes a muscle to stretch and then contract rapidly. This is known as the stretch-shortening cycle.
A fast stretch shortening cycle will improve attributes like jumping, sprinting, throwing and hitting. And just like with weightlifting, plyometrics will teach coordination throughout multiple muscle groups.
We can use plyometrics in multiple planes of motion like straight up and down, bounding forward or laterally, or even moving to the upper body with explosive pushing power or rotational power.
Max Strength Training
Now this one may seem obvious, and is definitely not exclusive to athletes.
But when we’re talking about things like rapid recruitment of muscle groups, decreasing the stretch shortening cycle and producing high amounts of force as quick as possible for things like jumping and sprinting, it’s important that we continue to increase our overall strength capabilities of these muscle groups.
For instance, a powerful vertical jump is dependent on being able to produce high and fast amounts of forceful hip and knee extension.
So through max strength exercises like heavy back squats and trap bar deadlifts, we can train how forcefully we’re capable of extending our hips and knees.
The relationship we have between our max strength training and our power training will be key to unlocking our maximum athletic potential.
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