Olympic Lifting. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Part 2

In part one of this series, I gave you guys my take on Olympic lifting and whether or not you should be doing lifts like the clean.

To sum it all up, if you don’t have a qualified coach to teach you Olympic lifting, then you are better off using explosive throws and jumps for power development. Which is the majority of High School athletes and the general population.

So now the question is how do you maximize your power development by adding these into your program?

So first off, what is power?

Power is work divided by time. Basically it’s generating as much force AS FAST AS POSSIBLE.

It’s what you see when a hard-hitting safety lights up a wide receiver over the middle. Or what you saw when Mike Tyson threw a right hook. It is explosive power.

Your training program can make or break your power development. If you’re a beginner, the first thing I like to focus on is creating a foundation of strength because let’s face it, if you’re weak you’re not going to have much power. If you have little experience with weight training, I highly recommend getting strong first and foremost.

Once you have a foundation of strength, or are an experienced lifter, you can start using explosive movements.

To really maximize your full explosive potential, it’s best to do these movements at the very beginning of your training program for the day.

For example, if you’re training lower body on Monday, you can start off with jump squats for 5 sets of 5.

The benefit of doing explosive movements prior to strength work is that you’ll be in a fresh state. This is when you’ll be most explosive. It will also activate your central nervous system (CNS) and fast twitched fibers, to get you in an even stronger state by the time you get to your strength stuff!

Now you are ready to train. And that is just one example. You can do different explosive exercises on each day that you train. You can try medicine ball overhead throws, vertical jumps, broad jumps, plyo push-ups and much, much more.

Just keep them to about 5 reps or less. You don’t want to exceed 5 reps because then you’re getting out of that power rep range. Plus you don’t want to get fatigued before you start your strength work.

Of course, if you are someone who can do Olympic lifts properly, add them in the same way I just discussed.

Also beware of certain conditioning methods. As I mentioned in previous posts, long, steady state cardio can kill your strength and power. Plus it’s boring as hell so avoid it at all costs!

If you’re still unsure about how to start implementing your power work, feel free to drop a comment below or shoot me an email. I’ll be glad to help!

Until next time,

Train pissed off!