Getting and staying explosive

My last post was about training for different types of gains - maximal strength, explosive strength or power, and muscle mass. While most of us who hit the weight room in the gym consistently might end up training to build muscle and accrue increases in strength to a decent degree we might end up missing out on explosive strength.

Developing explosive strength or power translates to gains in moving a certain weight - be it your own body or an external weight as quickly as possible. Think about Olympic lifts, clapping pushups, hurdle jumps, or any explosive and athletic movement.

“But why should I be explosive?” I hear you ask “I’m not an athlete and I feel good enough with moving the weights and hitting the treadmill as it is". I’m going to take the time to answer this first.

To start, research has shown that training to build muscular power helps prevent fall-related injuries as you age. Depending on your choice of exercises to develop this aspect, you’d be training your joints in tandem with your muscles to get strong, improve/maintain function, and prevent their degeneration as you age, allowing you to age gracefully.

How best to program explosive exercises? I follow a slightly modified version of something called Undulating Periodization where I employ full-body weight training 3 days a week with a different focus on each day while bringing in a conditioning day between days 1 and 3 and 3 and 5. It goes something like this -

Day 1 - Lower body power followed by upper body heavy strength

Day 2 - Conditioning and abdominal training

Day 3 - Full body hypertrophy

Day 4 - Conditioning and abdominal training

Day 5 - Lower body heavy strength followed by upper body power

On days 1, 3, and 5, after performing phase 1 of general warmup, I move into phase 2 where I perform 4 or 5 sets of 5 repetitions of lower body and upper body explosive exercise variations. Lower-body explosives would look like jump squats or lunge jumps while upper-body explosives would look like explosive or clapping pushups or med ball throws. After this, I move into the main workout phase mentioned on days 1, 3, and 5. Now, the traditional undulating periodization has one primary focus each of the three days for the full body - Monday would be hypertrophy-focused, Wednesday and Friday would be pure power and pure strength with some accessory exercises respectively. I, however, find the modification I’ve made above is easier on my recovery but to each their own.

Now, notice that on days 2 and 3 there is some power focus on the lower or the upper body. Would this be redundant to the phase 2 warmup I mentioned? Not exactly because phase 2 warmups are with very light weights or with just the body weight and are meant to prime my motor units and joints to be ready for the actual workout whereas the actual power exercises are going to be with loads 50 to 60 percent of my one rep max (the maximum weight I can lift for just one rep). These two variations of explosive power exercises induce my body to go through different adaptations on a spectrum of strength and speed (which would become clearer when I talk about something called the force-velocity curve later).

Here’s a caveat that comes with training power though - when you include some form of aerobic endurance training (running, cycling, et cetera) concurrently, there will be a negative effect on your power development as concluded by a study in 2021¹ . The effect is worsened when the aerobic training is done in the same session as the power session but lessened if training is separated by at least 3 hours (I prefer separating them by a day to lessen the interference).

With all that said, should one compromise between aerobic endurance for power or the other way around? It depends. For the everyday athlete, the benefits from including both in your training program are simply too much to be passed over. While there might be some level of compromise on the power front, it can be minimized when it’s programmed right. For the endurance athlete, the focus will be more on endurance training but power and strength training have their place too but placed in different parts of the training cycle. The same principle applies for the power-based athlete, except the focus more on power development.

Well, that’s a wrap for now. As always, feel free to drop a comment below if you’ve got a question or reach out to me over srihari.venkataramana@gmail.com or Instagram if you’re interested in training with me.

References:

Schumann, Moritz & Feuerbacher, Joshua & Sünkeler, Marvin & Freitag, Nils & Rønnestad, Bent & Doma, Kenji & Lundberg, Tommy. (2022). Compatibility of Concurrent Aerobic and Strength Training for Skeletal Muscle Size and Function: An Updated Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Sports Medicine. 52. 10.1007/s40279-021-01587-7.