Guest Post by Eric Bach, CSCS
Being yoked and strong is great. But, to be the total package you need power — the ability to generate strength fast. The result is improved athleticism.
Problem is, once most guys hit 25 they stop playing sports. Their athleticism and power evaporate quicker than a raindrop in Death Valley.
Most guys take one of two roads. Half ditch the gym altogether, they occasionally waste away on the treadmill, before rushing to yet another “urgent” work meeting. They come to accept a mediocre body as the cost of doing business.
The other half?
They persevere, pushing the envelope in the gym to forge a stronger, leaner, and more athletic body. If there’s a wall they’ll climb it. If there’s a plateau, they’ll smash through it.
Unfortunately, the methods that build power and athleticism when younger take their toll.
You no longer feel invincible.
The small crackle in your knee is now a constant dull ache, a perpetual source of irritation.
That old shoulder injury? That fucker stays locked into place if you sleep wrong.
Despite the best intentions, most guys find staying athletic and powerful isn’t worth the cost of injuries.
What we need is Pain Free Power.
Like everything else in training, methods are many. To unleash your inner athlete and develop pain-free power we’ll instead focus on the principles of power — moving with maximum explosive intent.
Methods are many, principles are few, methods often change, but principles never do.” -Alwyn Cosgrove.
Developing Pain Free Power
You’re after a body that’s strong, lean, and athletic. It’s your duty to be capable of handling anything life throws at you and be mentally confident to attack any challenge. The best way to do that is improving power through the most efficient, safest ways possible.
Build and Maintain a Base of Strength
Strength builds a base of speed and athleticism. Without it, training with cool methods like dynamic effort lifting and medicine ball throws is pointless.
There are two major types of strength I’m referring to: absolute strength and relative strength.
Absolute Strength: Being able to lift big weights or big resistance ex. ) 1-Rm Squat, pushing a car.
Relative Strength: Being strong for your size, moving your body through space. Ex. Sprint, chin-up, jump and move on the beach.
Both absolute and relative strength are important. But, for power you need to generate usable strength fast– both against big loads and with your body.
Thankfully, our industry has evolved to the point where most people are sufficiently strong. Still, too many lifters are beat up from obsessing over the barbell, yet incapable of jumping, sprinting, or doing perform 12 chin-ups.
For pain free power, emphasize strength in major movement patterns like squats, deadlifts, presses, rows, and chins. There’s no need to limit yourself to the big 3 powerlifting movements.
Use the trap bar, football bar, and change techniques.
Strong is strong –don’t limit yourself to a one variation of a movement.
Further, the more advanced your training, the less often you need to lift heavy to maintain it. Aim to lift heavy (3-8 RM) every 10-14 days in major movement patterns to maintain strength without crushing your body.
Lift Lighter, Lift Faster
When it comes to improving power there are two major methods:
- Lift heavier weights
- Lift lighter weights (or your body) faster
Most dudes already lift heavy, and benefit by dialing back heavy loading a bit.
The missing ingredient for most guys is lifting lighter weights, faster.
Like lifting heavy, lifting lighter weights with maximum explosive intent places a similar “demand” on the nervous system to recruit muscle fibers with less stress.
This has several benefits.
- Greater Muscle fiber recruitment. Greater muscle fiber recruitment increases the number of muscle fibers stimulated in a workout.This opens the door for fatiguing more muscle fibers if hypertrophy is the goal.
- Less CNS Stress. Anyone who’s knocked out a max squat can tell you you’re body feels stale and wrecked for a few days after the max.Heavy lifting coupled with our on-demand lifestyles leaves most guys a mess.We’re overstressed, under-rested cortisol ridden messes.Improve sleep quality, meditate, ditch the LCD screen, and chill out more. Then, drop the frequency of maximal lifting for explosive, lighter lifting.
- Less Joint Stress. I’m a meathead at heart and love hoisting big weights. Still, overzealous near maximal lifting is a joint killer. Sore, damaged joints can crush training consistency and long-term progress. Lighter, more explosive lifting can decrease this stress while helping preserve strength and CNS efficiency.
- Increased Training Frequency. Training frequency is important for motor learning, building strength, and building muscle. The more often you can train with adequate recovery, the better your results. Lifting lighter with explosive intent decreases stress and allows lifters to hit the iron more often.
Focus on Movement Patterns, Not Classic Exercises
We’re all biased in the gym. Coaches too.
We apply what worked best for us to clients, sometimes to a fault.
I made the same mistake, thinking that lifting heavy, Olympic lifts, and the methods that made me strong and athletic worked universally.
I was wrong.
Training methods that work early in a training career don’t always work later on.
For unleashing your inner athlete, it’s not the methods of beastin’ cleans: It’s the principle of moving weight explosively.
To develop pain free power we must work use explosive exercises that minimize stress. Here are the top options:
Partial Olympic Lifts: The driving component of Olympic lifts is explosive hip extension. The same hip extension drives acceleration in sprinting and jumping ability. This drives sports-specific programming: matching movements in sport with weight room exercises.
To cut joint stress and build explosive hip extension, you can use partial Olympic lifts.
The Hang Position: Most tall dudes do better from the hang position. Similarly, lifters with back injuries and can’t maintain neutral lumbar spine when pulling from the ground are better off from the hang position.
Hang Clean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFkXVb0LQhE
Eliminate the Catch: To protect the wrists, elbows, and shoulders use partials and emphasize full hip extension.
Instead of full cleans, using hackey pulls, high pulls, and power shrugs. Instead of snatches, use snatch grip high pulls, power shrugs.
Hang High Pull: Pulling from below the knee eliminates the initial pull from the ground. This cuts the most problematic piece of the Olympic lifts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dtmeNx5kiA
Hackey Pull: I picked this game changing lift up from coach Loren Landow. The Hackey pull grooves explosive and full hip extension.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t508GuPWAU
High Pull: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaBONHB2Zzg
Dynamic Effort (DE) Training
Derived from the Russian Strength geniuses like Verkhoshansky, DE was popularized by Louis Simmons and Westside barbell. The goal with DE is to lift lighter weights with as much force as possible–Like lifting a max.
With DE training, you’ll improve CNS function, recruit more muscle fibers, and syncronize movements. As a bonus, you can train more often, improving movement quality while staying fresher compared to heavy lifting.
Instead of focusing on only lifting heavy, follow DE protocols. Think Dynamic Effort compound lifts with 30-70% 1-RM most weeks. Then, sprinkle in the occasional heavy strength session ever 10-14 days.
Light, Explosive Work: Once their competitive sports careers end, most guys completely abandon explosive movement. But, they still lift heavy as the cure-all to training.
To regain your athleticism, you need to introduce high velocity. That means jumps, throws, jumping rope, and explosive bodyweight exercises.
The key to maximizing your high performance body is matching explosive exercises with compound movement patterns.
Squat: For the squat movement, vertical jumps are the most similar. To stay explosive and athletic, you’ll need a dose of jumps in your routine.
I prefer box jumps because they’re low impact, granted to step onto a smaller box on the way down rather than jumping backwards. 2-3 sets of 3-5 reps before your lifts is a good starting point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDjRXb-NGMI
Other great jumps include static, single response jumps. As you add countermovements, multi-response jumps, and additional weight, complexity and joint stress increase.
Hinge: Explosive hip extension is the name of the game in the hinge pattern. Light and explosive kettlebell swings are a great option.
Broad jumps build incredible power, but beware: their’s a ton of shear stress on the knee when landing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM31kyT7b9w
Focus on jumping both up and out if you include broad jumps, and only use them for 2-3 sets of 2-3 reps during shorter training cycles.
Other options: Space permitting, medicine ball back tosses, medicine ball broad jump chest toss.
Push: To maximize pushing power explosive push-up variations are best. But, some push-up variations like clapping push-ups can crush your wrists and elbows so proceed with caution.
To dial back joint stress, I have three explosive pushing variations I use with my clients.
Incline Plyo-Push-up: Elevating the hands decreases joint stress upon landing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OICf90Glwg
Pop-Up Push-Up: Explosive push-up, walk the hands down.
Medicine ball Pop-up: Short range of motion push-up gives a great squeeze on the sternal fibers on the chest, but is a bit tougher on the wrists.
Pull: Pulling movements, both horizontal and vertical are tougher to integrate. Still, the key principle of maximum explosive intent helps you develop power in pulling movements.
My favorite exercise to stimulate the lats with explosive movement is the overhead slam.
Use a 10-15 lb sand bell or medicine ball (wear a nut-cup to protect your buddies) and keep your chest tall. Then, without bending forward, slam the ball down as hard as possible. This really fires the lats and teaches your body to prevent flexion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeguWbNhLfg
Beyond slams, you can also do your usual chin-ups and inverted rows with as much speed on the way up, followed by a slow negative. The key here is generating as much force as you can on the way up. Once rep speed slows down end the set, rest, and continue for 3-5 sets of 3-5 reps.
Putting a Plan to Action
Training for athleticism and power leaves a lot of guys battered and bruised.
No more.
With the focus on moving with explosive intent you can generate pain free power, boosting your athleticism and building a body that’s strong, lean, and athletic.
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Eric Bach is a Strength Coach and writer in Denver, Colorado. Chief Coffee Crusher at Bach Performance, Eric bridges the gap between athletics and aesthetics to help men clients look better naked and optimize their athleticism.
