If you want to run faster, jump higher, cut harder or throw further, then power development exercises and their proper planning is critical to understand. Everyone wants more power in their athletic pursuits, but achieving it is a route that requires some wisdom and planning along the way.
Power development for athletes can give way to a huge spectrum of training methods, some highly effective, but some, more for eye candy on social media that will tend to deliver flat results.
In my early days of training, I did the Air Alert programs, wall sits, and various strength-endurance routines in hopes of increasing my jumping ability. It wasn’t until I was 16 that I was exposed to my first true “power” program in regards to vertical jumping, which was “The Science of Jumping”, a gem I found in the back pages of SLAM magazine. The result: I increased my 1 and 2 leg jumps around 5” within a few months’ time after slowly pushing the needle the years prior. (What I specifically modified the science of Jumping into becoming the impetus for my “Vertical Ignition” program, which included a rotating system of sprints and strength training movements).
From the ages of 16-25 I ran through pretty much every training method I could get my hands on, finishing with the pinnacle of “The Greatest Sports Training Book Ever” by “DB Hammer”. As a young track coach in my 20’s, training sprinters and jumpers, I already had 10 years of training and learning under my belt. I was able to guide several of my athletes to NCAA All-American status, including a national champion in the 55m dash, and a runner-up in high jump in this time period, but also had a lot of athletes “peak early” or just not achieve as much potential as I thought they could.
In the next “bracket”, 26-36 years old (I’m currently 36), I’ve been running through hybrid forms of Triphasic Training, Cluster Training, Easy Strength, and 1×20, depending on the team and situation. In this time, I was able to take much of my work from before, and worked hard to refine it, trying to prevent the early peaking I would occasionally create in my athletes due to not knowing how to properly time my higher-intensity sets that would create the greatest power gains, and how to properly set up for those sets.
I also gained a lot of insight on the way I would undulate my workloads from week to week, and throughout the course of training cycles. On top of this, I learned an immense amount on the culture and emotional states that go into training athletes to break through speed and power barriers.
I’ve had a lot of great success over the last decade (lots of vertical jump and sprint success stories, master’s track and field world and American record holders). A pinnacle of my last 10-year “block” of learning has been a university swimmer achieving a 41.2” (105cm) standing vertical jump on a just jump mat. This was a year that I felt that I had really put the training together in a way that most synthesized the expertise of the many minds I’ve been able to talk with on my podcast, as well as in casual coaching conversation.
To this end, I’ve created a list of 10 things that I’ve learned and look for when it comes to creating effective speed and power training for athletes. This article comes right off of an incredible podcast with LSU coach Boo Schexnayder, which really set my mind on this topic, and helped put me in a place to settle and refine yet again, many of the things I’ve been putting together over the last 20 years. I have Boo to thank for much of what I’ve learned, along with many other elite coaches and mentors, by whom I’ve been able to slowly improve from year to year in my coaching and program writing.
Here is my list of the 10
- Work all ends of the force-velocity spectrum, and avoid too much heavy lifting
- Know your “end game” on a monthly and yearly level.
- Give yourself something to build on
- Understand individual response to power training stimulation
- Play games more often, and attach emotional meaning to power work
- Understand range of motion in training exercises
- Train the foot and ankle
- Know how to use and integrate complexes and contrasts
- Implement somewhat regular restoration and “washout” periods
- Alternate periods of intensity and periods of frequency
Here we go! (If you enjoy this, my book “Speed Strength” expands on many of these topics in more detail and with scientific references)
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Work all ends of the force-velocity spectrum, and avoid too much heavy lifting
If you want to get more powerful, lifting weights, and improving the raw “force” you can produce against the ground tends to come to mind. While its’ true that lifting weights and getting stronger plays an important role in the acquisition of power, it’s critical to contrast weight training (or you could say, low speed, high force training), with faster forms of training in the plyometric and sprinting realms.
For example, a well-known study by Adams in 1992 showed that groups that trained using only squats or only depth jumps for a 10-week period gained 3cm on their vertical jump respectively. The group that trained with both exercises combined ended up gaining 10cm on their jump. This is the epitome of synergistic effects.
On top of the “lower speed” realms of lifting and jumping (these are relatively lower speed compared to sprinting), we have acceleration (faster by step 1 or 2 than the highest speed plyometrics), and then top-end speed sprinting. Having athletes who don’t usually reach top speeds in their sport can actually be an incredible exercise for improving their power. In my first podcast with Boo Schexnayder, he spoke on how implementing maximal velocity sprinting for volleyball players improved their vertical jumps by a few inches.
Finding ways to implement all three “modes”, lifting, plyometrics, and fast sprinting (or in Inno-Sport speak, DUR, MAG, and RATE) is critical for getting the most out of an athlete’s power potential.
Finally, know that too much heavy lifting over time, particularly work above 85% can really stiffen the nervous system, creating a reversal of results and lower rates of force development. Sometimes with this type of work, weight room numbers might still be going up, as the body is adapting to the lift specifically, but at the expense of elasticity and rate of force development.
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This chart from “Speed Strength” is an overview of several different training methods, benefits and drawbacks
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Know your “end game” exercises and training sets on a monthly and yearly level.
Boo Schexnayder talked heavily about this on our last podcast. When you are planning out your training, it’s critical to know the “meat and potatoes” power sets that you are going to want to do in your training year, and at what point in the year, relative to the biggest meets and competitions you are going to want to do them. For Boo, some of these were workouts with 30 total depth jumps, or working with maximal weights in the Olympic lifts.
If you use these “end game” or “trump card” workouts too early in a year, you’ll have nowhere to go to build on them later. For those reading who may not be working on a specific competition timeline, just realize that you generally want to structure training cycles so that you understand when the “trump card workout” will be administered, and then how you will recover from it and set yourself up for the next block of training. You can’t run rounds of 30 intense depth jumps across an entire year and keep making gains.
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Give yourself something to build on from a volume and intensity perspective
There are a few ways to go about the idea of setting up a year in terms of power training. The easiest and most straightforward way is to go from a higher volume of lower-intensity work to more high-intensity work. For example, you could train weights with 1×20 in a fall training period, and then move to a more low-rep-oriented scheme in the spring.
You could do more tempo sprints in the fall and then start lowering that volume in the spring as you do more intense sprinting and competitions (if you are a track athlete).
You could do more multi-jump style work early in the year, and then more depth jumps later.
More unilateral lifting early in the phase, and more bilateral lifting later on. This is a tried and true effective method.
Another way to look at this (that can also incorporate what I just talked about), I’ve based on something I learned from Keir Wenham-Flatt, which is starting with the minimal effective dose, or lowest possible volume, and working up from there. For example, in strength training his football players, he will see how much gains they can make on a 1×20 stimulus. When that adaptation is hit, he’ll give them 1×15. When they tap out there, then it’s 1×10. After no more gains are achieved on 1×10, he’ll give them 2 sets to work with, a 1×20 then a 1×15 and so on (see the Instagram post below).
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I did something similar with my men’s swim team this past year. I often do French Contrast for the sprinters in the fall, and usually do 3-4 sets as a “base”, and then it gets undulated and tapered down towards the championship season in the spring. This year, I decided to flip-flop things and go 2 sets in the fall, and then give them 3 sets in the spring, and it worked great (again, looking at the 41.2” vertical jump done in February, right on time for peaking… sans COVID’s canceling of the NCAA championships).
Even in my minimal dose situation with the contrast, I was running other higher volume, moderate intensity style work as listed in the first paragraph, that was all building things up towards the high-powered session in the spring.
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Understand individual response to power training stimulation
This one goes back to point 1 just a bit. Realize that some athletes will tend to do better, or be more “at home” on various ends of the force-to-speed equation. Some athletes can find regular training more effective, or peak better with lifting, some with plyometrics, and some with maximal velocity type work, although there is always a combination that exists. Asking athletes which training they enjoy the most is a good place to start, and notice what they find exciting and enjoyable in your training arsenal.
As I talk about in my book “Speed Strength”, one of the simplest ways to polarize this is athletes that respond more optimally to 60-80% of 1RM in the weight room and those that respond better to 80% and above from a rate of force development perspective. It’s my recommendation, however, that even those athletes that do better at 80% and above take regular periods to “deload” from working at high intensities.
Finally, it is good to work on weaknesses in the early training periods, but never at the expense of forward-moving adaptation.
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Play games more often, and attach emotional meaning to power work
Playing games is something I’ve been obsessed with for a long time when training athletes. My track athletes would play a game nearly every Wednesday in our off-season preparation, and this added a valuable element to our overall progress. I even moved this up to occasionally using games such as ultimate frisbee for our warmup in track and field. In working specifically in the weight room, I am using games more and more to help athletes warm up for further gym work. With the hectic schedule and stresses of modern life, a game is a welcome break and a great way to light up the nervous system and awaken the body on multiple levels.
Looking at the emotional context of exercises is very important. There may be particular things that really light an athlete up to achieve higher outputs. The training environment is absolutely one, as the group one trains with is going to have a substantial impact on their energy and emotional states. Another is specific implements. Doing a depth jump with a basketball in one’s hands, up to a dunk on a low-rim may be far more emotionally charged than simply doing a depth jump up into space. Doing an acceleration development complex racing against teammates may be much more emotionally charged than running by one’s self (although when timed, running by one’s self is highly motivating).
Finding ways to cycle and analyze motivation, emotion, and intention is a valuable practice.
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Understand range of motion in training exercises
I’ve always enjoyed cycling range of motion exercises throughout the year, working from deep squats to partials and back again, or cycling in a wave of 10” box step-ups, perhaps contrasted with bounding, at opportune times.
With range of motion in training, I’ll stick with Boo Schexnayder’s prescription of using full range of motion with slower exercises (such as squats) and then using partial ranges with faster exercises (such as the catch in Olympic lifts, or speed half squats). Boo does find it OK to use partial ranges, but only for short periods of time, such as 3-4 weeks, before negative effects on the nervous system start to kick in.
The research does tend to indicate that partial squats are superior to full-range lifts for athletes (of already adequate full-range strength) looking to run faster and jump higher (in studies they were used for over 4 weeks), but this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep an eye on how long we use these stimuli for and how we contrast them.
You always want the “base” of full-range training in a program, and then go to selective partial range work at the end of a training cycle for a few weeks, or towards important competitions.
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Train the foot and ankle
This one is a given if you’ve been following my writing for a while, but it’s really critical to at least pay the foot some credence at the beginnings and endings of the workout. As Max Shank mentioned on our recent podcast, just spending 5 minutes at the beginning of a workout focusing on the foot pays huge dividends (Max recommends dancing for this).
Reactive strength index (RSI), or the ability to get off the ground quickly in jumping and move reactively, is a big differentiator of elite athletes. The best athletes in pro sports aren’t the weight room masters, but they tend to have better RSI’s than most. To get that RSI to its highest point, training the foot is essential. Great athletes have feet that tend to work pretty darn well with no extra training required. What messes us up over time is footwear, injury and a lack of sensation. I’d recommend checking out my podcast with Chong Xie as well for some great ideas on foot training and reactivity.
At the end of the day, simply doing a lot of small, multi-directional jumps on a variety of surfaces is going to give you some great results with the foot and ankle. Keep an eye out as well for my new book on foot training and performance, which is coming out in the next several months.
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Know how to use and integrate complexes and contrasts
If you want to become maximally powerful, at some point, you need to start looking into complex training, and various contrasts. I enjoy using contrasts throughout the year, from bounding complexes, to French Contrast, and more. Some of my favorite setups are things like:
- Bounding Complexes: 150-300m of things like “Left-Right”, then “Left-Left-Right-Right”, then “Left-Left-Left, Right-Right-Right”.
- French Contrast using depth jumping
- Alternating Barbell Step Ups and Bounding
- Sprint Complexes such as: Flying 10, Flexed Leg Bounding, Hurdle Hops and Single Leg Line Hops (got this from Chris Korfist and Dan Fichter)
I enjoy using periods of “meat and potatoes” blocks earlier in a training period, and moving into complexes later on. You can also use complexes early with a skill (such as sprinting), and then move more into the singular skill later on. To me, one way to look at things is non-specific training (SDE, SPE, GE) starting simple and get more complex later, and specific training (CE) can start complex and move to simple, but there are many ways to do this in reality.
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Sample Bounding Complex
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Implement somewhat regular restoration and “washout” periods
Rest is important. Not just in a training cycle, but also in the time between 10-14 week blocks of training. As Derek Evely talks about his training methods based on Anatoliy Bondarchuk’s training system, after each developmental cycle (which was variable in length, but generally, let’s say they lasted 40 days) you want to do a “washout” or “cleanse” cycle, to make sure that your adaptation for the next block will be sound, and you won’t “mess up” the next training cycle. These cycles run just over a week, and there is no intense training in them.
Similar strategies should be implemented in working in traditional training blocks and periods. In my experience, often times holidays take care of this by themselves, such as fall breaks, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Spring Break. Many coaches holding a tight grip are afraid their athletes will detrain and lose all gains in these periods and really push working hard over the breaks, but so often, these times are essential for an athlete to let their system restore and recover. I’m not saying to do absolutely nothing for the entirety of these breaks, but it’s important to appreciate the seasons of life, and in training, it’s no different.
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Alternate periods of intensity and periods of frequency
Finally, realize that life comes in waves. If you read the “Greatest Sports Training Book Ever”, you might have seen the ratio by which training for frequency (more times a week) was alternating with training for intensity (less times a week). Our body will eventually adapt to however many times we are training a particular quality in the course of a week, so waving or varying back and force with training blocks that are more frequency oriented (lower total training volume) and more intensity oriented (higher training intensity and volume in each training day) can be useful in helping to break plateaus and keep the weekly routine fresh. Some athletes will need variation here more than others.
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