Written by: Coach Burba, CSCS, RPR, USAW
~6 min read
Is being slow keeping you from a weight room PR? Or are you always moving fast until you hit that big weight and you get pinned? It’s time to talk about how to get out of these plateaus and get back to the results you have been chasing. Today's goal is to help you assess your current strength and power levels and decide which should be your next training focus to continue pushing your ceiling. So, let's get down to basics.
What is strength
In your beginning stages of working out, you get stronger by your nervous system learning to utilize more of your current available muscle to perform a given task. Simply exposing yourself consistently and frequently to resistance exercise will make you “stronger.” After a few weeks of this general exposure, you can begin progressing the resistance so that your body creates more muscle over time to overcome the heavier weight. After you learn to better use what you already have, other adaptations will start to set-in: stronger tendons and ligaments and denser bones. Once you have successfully adapted to the initial exposure of resistance training, it is time to get more specific in your training approach. How specific you should train depends on your future goals.
If we want to simply get stronger, we would set goals towards absolute strength or relative strength. For clarity, relative strength compares how much weight you can lift in relation to current body weight. For example, if you weigh 200 lbs and can squat 400lbs, you can squat twice your bodyweight. If a person who weighs 150 lbs can also squat 400lbs, they are relatively stronger, as that is 267% of their bodyweight. Absolute strength on the other hand is only concerned about the total amount of weight lifted without regard to your bodyweight. Most competitive strength sports only consider relative strength and use scores like Wilks, Robi points, or Sinclair equations to control for differences in bodyweight (and sometimes age). Each of those measures have their own respective rules and won’t be covered here, but they are scales of relative strength.
What is Power
Power is a measure of how quickly you can move a given resistance or weight. Where strength is measured in pounds, kilos, etc, Power includes the measure of time. If two athletes have the same body weight and technical proficiency in a squat and are lifting the same weight, say 300lbs, but one is moving the weight more quickly, then they would be considered more powerful. Power considers your absolute strength and the speed at which you can execute an exercise at a given weight. Becoming more powerful requires a different training approach than becoming stronger. To be powerful, you have to train your muscles to contract faster, utilize the elastic component of your tendons more, and be skilled at the movement itself that you are trying to add speed to. Simply developing more muscle will not necessarily make you more powerful. But being more powerful usually involves adding more muscle. For example, a traditional body builder has a lot of muscle mass and typically an above-standard of absolute strength. However, the speed at which they can move certain weights would be quite slow compared to say, an olympic weightlifting athlete (even if they have less muscle mass). This is because a weightlifter is required to accelerate weights at maximum speeds in order to complete their movements, while bodybuilders don’t train speed out of necessity. So how do you know what to train and when? That can be adequately answered by looking at some standards (for general physical preparedness that we recommend everyone have) and knowing your future goals.
As mentioned previously, knowing whether you want to improve your weightroom performance or your athletic performance matters when choosing to train for strength or power. There are plenty of standards for relative strength goals for men and women. For example, a good goal for men is to squat double their body weight; for women about 1.5 x bodyweight. I believe, if you are not a field athlete or a consistent recreational athlete, that training to obtain relative strength goals should be a main priority. Relative strength is a rising tide for all ships. However, if you are a recreational or seasonal athlete, you need to spend time developing power. With my many years in field and weightroom athletics on top of how we use velocity based training (VBT) nowadays, I have a power standard I like to see in my athletes. Regardless of where their relative strength is, I want them capable of moving 65-75% of their 1RM with speed and proficiency. Watching the elite strength sport athletes, they move 80-90% with speed; a true demonstration of power.
What do you need?
If you are a “slow” strength athlete (slow being relative compared to an olympic weightlifting athlete or Highland Games athlete) then I would recommend keeping or obtaining the capability of moving ~70% of any given lift with dynamic speed for 2-4 reps. If your 70% moves at roughly the same speed as your 80 or 90% then we know you need some full-range power movements. The benefits of prioritizing this include faster muscle contractions (increased muscle fiber quality) at heavier loads, stronger and more responsive tendons (this helps especially with getting out of the bottom of a squat), and overall tissue health. Poor connective tissue has been shown to correlate with increased morbidity especially as we age. We want strong but also elastic tendons for boosting and keeping our performances throughout our lifetime. Strong connective tissue increases our GPP (general physical preparedness), and thereby reduces injury risk, as well as your overall physical capabilities in random tasks.
If you are a field or speed sport athlete in some capacity, then we want to make sure you can move loads through full ranges and at high velocities. If you can squat a lot but still don’t see a speed improvement on the field, then you need to focus on power! Knowing that you are strong enough is important when you are involved in field sports, however if you can squat 400lbs but 200lbs moves at the same speed, we have got some work to do. Sure, just getting stronger can increase your vertical jump. However, if we have a speed component in your training to make sure you are moving high loads fast, we can get even more out of the field performance.
How to start
If this blog made you start thinking about your speed, here are some ways to test and find out how to move forward. Starting at 50% of any main lift, see how fast you can proficiently move the weight in 7 seconds. A minimum requirement for my clients is a rep per second through full range of motion. If you’re good there, try 60% for 5 seconds, and 65-70% for 3 seconds; 70% through full ROM for 3 reps in 3 seconds is POWERFUL! That percentage and reps over time ratio is on the highest end of power training by my standards. Do take into account your height and appendage length however. If you have really long legs relative to your torso, then you may be on the slower side of the squat test just because of distance but be on the faster side of the test for bench press; same is true for longer arms and pressing. A good goal you should have is to hit the 65% test. As you attempt these tests, pay attention to where you may be losing speed. Most of the time it is at the bottom when change of direction needs to happen. This is due to inadequate tendon strength and can be trained through paused lifts and isometrics. The various ways to train for power will be discussed in a separate post but these tests and a little bit of paused training should get you to a base standard.
If you are still new in your training journey, then I would encourage you to continue with increasing relative strength through general resistance training for at least 12 weeks before adding heavier speed training. While executing your general strength training you can have some plyometric days incorporated into the weeks to add some healthy tendon and ligament training that will make power training a little smoother down the road.
So, take a second to examine your lifting! Don’t let the lack of power keep you from your next PR and start lifting fast. Reach out if you need help either through our media @bg_powerhouse or email: coach@bowlinggreenpowerhouse.com. We love to share as much knowledge as we can and are always happy to help.
