The Best Power Exercise You Can Perform

It is the thing that people love and at the same time scares them. POWER! I would say in the last ten to fifteen years, power training has made a serious impact in fitness programs. It has always seemed obvious that athletes need to create power, but what about everyone else? 

When I was recently teaching in China and young lady came up to me and said her boss thought what I was teaching was great, but for athletes. I told her that was somewhat ironic since I have worked MOST with people over the age of 40 with little athletic background. We say we want to train people for the sport of life, but we are often scared of what that REALLY means! 

Really cool to bring DVRT to more people all over the world!

Trust me, I get it though. There is a lot of bad training programs that randomly throw power training into people’s workouts with establishing a sound base. You need to have strength and stability as that foundation to power otherwise that is where things get REALLY messy with power based training. 

The Problem with Power Training

Now, you might think, “I’m not an athlete why do I need power training?” Interestingly enough people never think of power on any continuum. They think of the hardest most explosive thing you can do. The truth is power is really learning how to accelerate and decelerate (yes, an oversimplification, but you get the point). 

Most people train and they just kinda of move a weight without any real intent on either aspect. Why does that matter, isn’t the point to lift a weight? I always try to explain the coaches that lifting a weight is far less important than HOW you lift a weight. One of the big things we want to do with power training is tap into our fast-twitch muscle fibers. Why? They have the best potential to build muscle, help us look leaner, and make us strong. The most impactful ones respond to power based training!

However, the impact of power goes deeper. Most of us perform power training all the time without thinking about it. Picking our kids up, bringing a bag to our shoulder, taking items out of the bottom of a cart and putting them in our car, yea, tons of different ways. That makes it surprising that so many coaches are afraid of power. 

People use power in their everyday lives all the time, like picking up their kids to give them some much needed affection! 

Even more so when you consider that deceleration is one of the most important qualities we can teach people. Astrophysicist, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, was recently on a show where he was talking about the risk of American football. He spoke specifically about the physics of the human body and how deceleration is where most have issues. 

Okay, you believe me power is important for everyone, but now we don’t want to blindly perform it! That is where people struggle, box jumps, crazy hurdle jumps, max power cleans, they are the unfortunate examples of people going too fast into power. 

Real power is a combination of strength, stability, and accelerative/decelerative force. One of the ways I love judging if someone is really ready for power training is putting them in positions that force them to use the RIGHT muscles to perform the movement. A great example of this is a drill I’ve been working on for awhile in my own training the kettlebell lunge clean. 

Why is this such a great drill? Basically you can’t cheat it! If you don’t possess the skills we just discussed you can’t perform the exercise. Great, I show you an exercise you might not be able to do, awesome right? Well, you know me and DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training. Showing you an exercise is great, showing you how to progress it is even better! 

That means today’s DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training video is going to break down the progressions we can use to build success in this movement. It is going to require you to have good hip mobility, strong integration of the core and hips, as well as finding out how well you can use the ground to create stability and power. In other words, a real power house drill but learning the make-up of the exercise is more important than the exercise itself. Try out some of these DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training progressions and find the real meaning of power training and how it can be done safely and incredibly effectively! 

Want to learn how to create dynamic functional fitness programs? Check out our DVRT workout programs HERE