Power, as it relates to strength and conditioning, is an often misunderstood concept for everyday lifters. They tend to think that power is an elusive training objective reserved only for athletes and their respective sports. When the everyday lifter lays out his goals for the training year, he primarily focuses on gaining size and strength. These are expected and admirable goals, but you will rarely ever hear someone say, “I want to be more powerful” when in fact, if he focused on primarily increasing his power, he would accomplish both his size and strength goals in the process in greater magnitude and less time.
Simply put, power is how fast a certain force is moved. For example, if you started a training program deadlifting 225 lbs in roughly three seconds from the floor to the final hip extension and six weeks later were able to do that same weight in one second, you have significantly increased your power output and more than likely gained overall size and strength. But why does increasing power open the door (or in most cases smash the door down) for breaking through size and strength plateaus?
I'm going to try to make this as basic as possible, but just hang with me as I delve into the inner workings of motor units and muscular contractions and their importance in you breaking through personal strength records and putting on size you thought your genetics wouldn't allow.
A motor unit is a motor neuron and all the muscle fibers it innervates. Every one of your muscles consists of motor units and muscle fibers. What you need to understand is that the more of these motor units you recruit, the more strength and power you can produce.
General exercise science dogma professes that the recruitment of these motor units is set in stone according to a size principle, which states that the slowest, smallest motor units are always recruited first and the large, powerful motor units are recruited last. This would lead one to believe that the motor units most responsible for growth wouldn't be activated until the end of the set. This has played a large role in the 3 X 10 standard training protocols for hypertrophy. However, most people fail to realize that there is a process of selective recruitment that occurs when the load and speed of the lift demand that the big, powerful motor units are recruited within the first few reps, and this process can be trained to happen!
Picture a one rep max. It isn't a lift that is done half-heartedly at a slow speed. It may look like the bar isn't traveling very fast, but you're moving it as fast as you possibly can, which is the key. On lifts such as these, you better believe your muscles aren't gradually going through an orderly size recruitment process, making sure the wimpy motor units don’t get their feelings hurt. Instead, they push those guys to the ground and make way for the big boys to do everything that they can to help you complete the lift.
A lot of mainstream bodybuilding media have drilled it into peoples’ heads that lifts should be done in a slow and controlled manner. I only partially agree with that. In order to recruit the biggest and most motor units possible (which if you have been paying attention is the physiological key to size and strength gains), you have to lift those seemingly easy, sub-maximal weights fast. When performing a set of 12 of any exercise, it is easy to perform that lift at a slower pace and not recruit the maximal amount of motor units that you could if you were lifting it at the fastest possible pace. But when it is all said and done, the faster you lift a weight on the concentric portion, the more potential there is for growth. It is as easy as that. So I would like to propose a new standard training philosophy that states weights should be lifted fast and controlled with any population. This isn't groundbreaking by any means and a lot has been written on the matter, but it still isn't standard knowledge. And a big reason is because the fast and controlled prescription sounds like an oxymoron. However, if you use solid technique and use the eccentric portion wisely (not let the weights come crashing down) to build up potential energy for the all important powerful concentric contraction, there isn't any better way to stimulate size, strength, and power gains.
“Power training” has been built up as an entire separate means of training from what many deem “normal” training. In all reality though, it is a principle of weight training that should be applied to any weight training program. Everyone can benefit from increased power. I mentioned earlier that weights should be lifted fast and controlled for any population. For instance, when personal trainers work with senior citizens, they are rightfully very careful with them. The problem that I have observed, however, is that because they are old and frail, they are instructed to lift light weight and lift it more slowly than a younger, perfectly healthy person. This is backward in my opinion. The trainer usually works on building up the amount of weight they work with but fails to gradually build their concentric lifting speed. This is crucial because that senior citizen will benefit just like anyone else would with increased strength and motor unit recruitment, which will help them with their everyday movements such as walking up a flight of stairs or picking up their grandchildren. The only difference is the rate at which they are progressed. Normally, they need to be given more time to progress than a 22-year-old athletic male.
Practically speaking, if you have never tried to train powerfully before, don't rush to become a master of it right away. It takes time to develop the neuromuscular control needed to perform quick, controlled movements with heavy weight, which brings me to my next point. I touched on it earlier, but I want to reiterate that speed isn't the only component of power. The load is also crucial, and in order to maximize powerful motor unit recruitment, the load needs to be heavy enough. So instead of doing the typical 3 X 10 work, mix it up and do 3 X 4 or 4 X 2. And lift those few reps as fast as possible. Be creative and just keep in mind those two components—heavy and fast. Get over what has always been preached by different studies on continuous muscular tension for hypertrophy and things like that and do what has worked for so many power athletes for decades who have actually been in the trenches and bring those big motor units to life!