By Mark Nemish
Performance Director

11.01.05

In my 14+ years as a strength and conditioning coach, the one thing that was constant in my association with college and professional athletes was that the fastest or quickest athletes were also the most powerful athletes.  In other words, the fastest running backs, receivers, or defensive backs were also the ones who could jump the highest or farthest.  The NHL players who could skate the fastest were the ones who were most able to accelerate light training loads in the weight room.  Speed and quickness is definitely synonymous with the rate of performing work or in other words, power. 

Athletes who are more powerful will definitely give themselves a greater opportunity to dominate their sport.  The volleyball or basketball player who can jump higher, the running back/receiver who can make sharper cuts on the field, the hockey player who can stop on a dime, or the baseball/softball player who can generate a more powerful swing will outperform their opponents.  It is no secret that college recruiters and those in the NFL and NHL intently look at the numbers that athletes can put up in the vertical jump and broad jump to determine the athleticism of those they may end up signing to a college or drafting into the pros.  Let’s take a look at how you can improve your athleticism so you can also dominate your sport!

The most important thing an athlete can train is something known as rate of force development.  Very simply, this is the initial acceleration of a run, jump or skating stride.  The first step in training rate of force development in young athletes is improving the skill of the movement.  As strength coaches at Dynamic Sports Performance, we must first teach athletes how to properly squat and recruit their posterior chain, glutes and hamstrings, in athletic movements.  We constantly see young athletes who are not able to properly use their own body to their advantage because their technique in athletic movements is lacking.  Once an athlete can master control over his/her body, we can then move into higher level training.  Unfortunately, most athletes try to progress too quickly and attempt to perform complex weight training exercises, such as Olympic lifting techniques, before demonstrating proper postural control. 

After mastering control, developing strength is crucial for young athletes in developing power.  Countless scientific research studies point to a clear correlation between absolute strength and power especially for young, inexperienced athletes.  The bottom line: if you get stronger in your lower body, you will be more powerful.  After increasing strength, one of the most important factors in training to become more powerful is the conscious intent to accelerate training loads.  In conversations with some of the best sport-science researchers in the world, all point to the intend to move training loads as fast as possible regardless of whether the load is heavy or light.  As a result, when squatting with a heavier load, you must try to move it as fast as possible on the ascent even though the movement speed of the bar is slow.  Thus being focused on every repetition you perform is crucial to your power gains. 

After training with heavier loads and a conscious intent to explode, keeping in mind that technique is in no way compromised, more specific means of power enhancement may be required to push your power gains through the roof.  My challenge in the NHL and my assistant David Mikel’s challenge in NFL Europe were to bring about increases in power and speed in athletes who were the best in the world.  As a result, the strength coach must analyze the sport and determine the specific muscular contractions needed for success.  For example, a football lineman needs tremendous starting power when coming off the ball to engage with the opposing lineman across the line.  Conversely, a volleyball or basketball player must have great reactive strength in landing from a jump with the requirement of either immediately jumping back up or moving laterally to follow the play.  Whatever the specific requirement, training must then follow to improve those particular qualities.  For example, when we train higher level volleyball players, we train them in an exercise called drop jumps to improve their reactivity off the ground.  Conversely in training an offensive/defensive lineman, an important exercise we use is the power clean in an effort to improve starting strength/power. 

A final forgotten element of power development is the deceleration

 
component.  Think of a basketball player who is chasing down a loose ball under the opposition’s goal.  He/she can run after the ball and allow his/her momentum to carry him/her out of bounds or if he/she had the ability to quickly stop after getting to the ball, he/she could possibly lay it up or dish it off.  Thus training the ability to quickly stop or arrest downward momentum is important in a variety of sports.  Being able to quickly decelerate and reverse direction will increase vertical jump height and cutting ability as well. 

Think of your need for power development in light of two different horse race scenarios.  In scenario one, one horse pulling a cart full of feathers is racing against a group of four horses pulling the same cart of feathers.  If you imagine the cart as weighing next to nothing, who wins the race?  The answer is the fastest horse.  Adding more horses to pulling a cart of feathers, that is increasing horse power, will not increase their collective speed.  In fact you may argue that if one of the four horses is quite slow, he may slow the pack down.  Scenario two is exactly the same with one exception: the cart is filled with lead.  Who wins the race?  Obviously the four horses should win the race by a landslide because collectively the four horses have greater power against a heavier load.  Scenario one is analogous to a sprinter in a 100 meter race while scenario two is analogous to a football lineman having to drive his opponent off the line.  Both need power, but each need a specific type of power.  Find your power needs, train it properly and progressively, and then dominate your opponent!

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