Building Power Through Strength

Keep it simple

Don’t reinvent the wheel with unnecessary movements. Make the movements as simple and, if necessary, sport specific as possible, ensuring the level of effort/intent the athlete is performing at is as maximal as possible.

Progressively overload

To keep an athlete improving, you must continually challenge them e.g. by increasing the weight they put in their hands/on their back; or increasing the speed and distance they run, cycle or swim. A well-managed periodised programme is key in ensuring the athlete is not over trained and is able to train with maximum intensity, ensuring they hit peak performance at key moments in their competition season.

Power

Mathematically, the rate at which work is done, is power. This is everything in sporting movements. If you improve the power of an athlete’s movement you will improve their ability to perform the movements they need to be competitive in their sport.

Practice makes perfect

Or, more importantly, perfect practice makes it perfect. Make sure you train the athlete to perform the movement as biomechanically perfect as possible. This will make them more efficient in the movements they perform which, in turn, will mean they will expend less metabolic energy i.e. If you had two distance runners with the same anthropometric measurements and the same VO2 max score, the athlete with the greater efficiency of movement will be the athlete more likely to win.

Make your weaknesses your strengths

An athlete’s performance will always be limited by the weakest link in their movements. If their weakness is not addressed, the imbalance created will have the potential to turn into an injury.