It’s Time to Power Up!

1/15/09 Posted in Grinnell Training System  |  0 Comments

The first and most obvious question, is power training just for young athletes? Absolutely not! Certain methods of developing explosive power may be geared towards young athletes better but, power helps golf, tennis, yard work, and lots of other activities. Power development actually becomes more critical as we age.

Why? Let’s look at some stats: Between the ages of 65 and 89 explosive lower limb extensor power (think lower body power) has been reported to decline at 3.5% per year compared to a 1-2% per year decrease in strength (Skelton et al. 1994). This means that as we age we actually lose power faster than we lose strength. So what’s the difference? The difference is that we can maintain strength with conventional weight training; in power training we need a speed component. (strengthcoach.com).

Everything from sports to cleaning the house needs some amount of power output. Regardless of your age, sports that you play, or daily tasks, everyone needs to maintain or increase their power output. There are many safe and effective ways that we can train power. You don’t have to be a top athlete, or someone who is in great shape to implement some power training into your workouts. I make all of my clients toss medicine balls around, and implement some low-impact plyometric jumps in every workout.

There are some things that need to be established first before you start to add some power work into your workouts. First you must address your tissue quality. This can be done by using the foam roller or other massage techniques. This will ensure that your muscles are functioning properly in order to perform some power work. The next issue that needs to be addressed is mobility. A proper mobility warm-up consisting of multi-planar squats or lunges, band walks, and scapular work are just a few ways to improve mobility. After good tissue quality and mobility methods are introduced, now you can start to power up!

For upper-body power I mostly focus on various types of medicine ball throws such as side tosses, chest pass, and overhead throws. For the lower body, I start with low impact box shuffles, hops, and progress to box jumps.

If you are not throwing in some power work into your workouts, you need to! Start today and you won’t regret it!