Dec 5, 2022
Tips to Improve Speed, Power, & Strength

injuries

Like so many Americans, you may be looking to step up your strength training routine as we approach the new year.

A recent article from Stack.com outlined eight great tips to improve the training regimens of people from elite athletes to weekend warriors and average Joes.

Below is an excerpt from the Stack.com article to help get more explosive workouts and take your training to the next level in 2021.

  1. Slow Eccentric Maximizes Strength
    These mechanisms train your muscles to absorb and generate greater levels of force, enhancing your strength and speed instantly. It is essential to teach your muscles how to absorb force in order to be stronger and move faster. Training fast, without eccentric development, will not make you faster. You don’t need to train all the time slowly, just for three weeks to develop the mechanisms.
  2. Train Lighter to be Faster
    Once you develop maximal strength, you have to cut the weight to 50-60% to develop speed, which is the purpose of maximizing strength. You will only be as fast as you are strong. If your strength index is 50, then your speed training would consist of 25. Now, if your strength index is 80, your speed training would be 40. Strength training heavy all the time without cutting the weight will make you slower. It is also the primary reason strength plateaus happen.
  3. Train the Functional 7
    Deadlift, Squat, Pull-up, Shoulder Press, Chest Press, Row, and Lunge. Once you strengthen the Functional 7, you can start to integrate exercises and expand movement from there.

    » ALSO SEE: 3 Dumbbells Workouts to Build Strength

    Perform 3 sets of 5 reps to become strong with your functional movements. After, you can combine some movements, for instance, a lunge with a press.
  4. Balance Your Training
    You need to train both sides of the body as well as multi-plane movements. Exercises such as back row and chest press, triceps pulldown, and biceps curl will develop strength and speed to greater levels rather than training one exercise at a time. Research in, The Journal of Strength and Conditioning showed that doing heavy rows before a chest press increased the chest pressing weight instantly.

To read the full story from Stack.com on the eight tips to boost your workout, click here.