What is Power and have You got some?

This blog has been on my to do list for a long time but having just got
back from the UKSCA Conference I have been inspired to finally write it!
So if you havent read up much on the APA training philosophy heres a
little background. We are all about developing complete athleticism
which includes Suppleness, Skill, Speed, Strength and Stamina.
Today I want to go into a bit more detail about the Strength and Speed
side of things because together these qualities lead to Powerful athletes.
Powerful athletes are hot property in professional sport- these guys can
make the difference between winning and losing. I often read articles
which refer to Explosiveness (related to Rate of Force Development
(RFD) and Power) as being a desirable quality to develop in the gym with
athletes. But at the same time I feel there is a lack of understanding as
to what these qualities are and how to develop them. This blog will clear
it up! But before we talk about Power we need to talk about Force
because your vertical jump, sprint speed, agility and explosiveness are all
directly related to your ability to produce force.
What is Force?
Force is a push or pull that can cause an object with mass to accelerate.
We produce force from signals developed in the brain and delivered from
nerves to control muscular contractions. These signals control the
magnitude and the rate of muscular contraction to act on our skeleton
to produce movement. To illustrate this point lets use an example. We
have a ping pong ball and a 200 lbs stone. To lift each will require a
completely different strategy. Lifting the ping pong ball is easy and does
not require much force. Our past experiences tell us the approximate
weight of the ping pong ball and we send an appropriate signal to various
muscles to pick-up the ping pong ball. Lifting the stone will require the
integration of more muscular force from the legs, arms, core and back.
The key point to appreciate is our nervous system controls our muscles.
In turn our muscles contract to produce a force that can cause an object
with mass to accelerate. Note, even if there is no movement, muscular
contractions are still producing forces.

Why is it important?
Newtons second law F=ma
In order to accelerate an object (assuming its mass stays constant) then
we need to apply force.
Now obviously we know that weight training in the gym is the best way
for our body to develop a greater ability to produce force but there is a
point of diminishing returns as otherwise if this werent true the
strongest athletes would be always be the fastest athletes. We would
simply have a group of athletes get under a squat bar, and whoever
squatted the most, would also be able to jump the highest. But there is
more to jumping than just strength alone.
So this is where Power comes in.
What is Power?
In order to understand Power we need to understand Force-Time Curves
Below we have a force and time curve. Memorize this graph, because it
is one of the most important graphs for an athlete to understand. Notice
force is plotted on the y axis and the time is plotted on the x axis. The
Dashed Line is the force required to move a given object. Forces below
this amount will not cause the object to move.
Lets say the object is a barbell weighing 100kg and we want to deadlift
this weight. Note a deadlift is taking a stationary weight from the ground
and lifting it to a standing position. When we examine the force time
curve we can identify unique strength qualities.
Ive already covered a full explanation of the curve in a previous Blog but
its worth going over it again.

Starting Strength refers to the ability to produce force rapidly at the

beginning of a muscular contraction prior to external movement. In our
example, the weight will not move until sufficient force has been
developed. This takes time and it reflects a very important quality. It is
always produced under conditions of isometric muscle action. This fact
alone has important consequences for strength training, because it
dispels the opinion that the once-popular method of isometric training
should be completely abandoned in modern training.
Athletes with a quick first step from a stationary position possess this
ability. People often describe this quality as an explosive start. To train
this quality the weight must be stationary and the athlete develops force
to overcome its resting position. This quality is very different than
acceleration strength. This quality is associated with getting yourself or
an object moving which is at rest, so this is extremely important in sports
like sprinting and American football/rugby who initiate the scrum from a
stationary position.
Its also extremely closely linked to deceleration strength, where you
have to bring yourself to a complete stop and then immediately redirect
the force for another sprint (often in a different direction).
For ease of discussion we can say there are two types of strength which
are associated with high rates of force development during the actual
movement of the bar:

Acceleration Strength- describes the ability to quickly achieve maximal

external muscle force once dynamic movement has been initiated. Some
athletes have tremendous abilities to develop force once moving, but
have trouble developing power at the start.
Explosive Strength characterizes the ability to produce maximal force
in a minimal time and is associated with peak Rates of Force
Development. These are the forces we are observing when the bar is in
motion. It is most commonly displayed in the fastest athletic movements
when the contraction of the working muscles in the fundamental phases
of the exercise is preceded by mechanical stretching (such as any
plyometric, throwing, kicking, striking or rebounding action in many
sports).
For me the exercises (such as Olympic weight lifting) that develop
acceleration strength will also be the same ones we use to develop
explosive strength, which we will describe shortly.
All of these qualities are associated with speed of movement and power
but differ based on the load used. We might refer to exercises which
work on the acceleration part of the Force-Time curve as strength-speed
and exercises which work on the explosive part of the Force-Time curve
as speed-strength- although I commonly see the strength speed
exercises referred to as explosive strength. For speed-strength there is
very little load applied to the body, 0 40% of an athletes maximal
strength. In strength speed the load represents 40 60% of ones
maximal strength respectively. All of these qualities are important and
elicit very different training effects. Current best practices emphasize a
full spectrum approach, where an athlete is exposed to all ranges in a
sequenced periodized approach. Research also reveals the method of
loading to produce the best training effect and power output is exercises
specific.
Olympic weightlifting is very popular as a tool to promote these qualities.
Why is this so? Because Elite level Olympic weightlifters are capable of
snatching over 150kg and can clean and jerk over 200kg. It is impossible
to perform Olympic weightlifting movements at a slow speed. So you
get a great combination of strength and speed. You get the same
amount of power generated as with a plyometric bodyweight jump, but
you also get strong at the same time!
The most powerful of all movements is the Olympic weightlifting action
of the second pull of a Clean, peaking at 55.8 Watts/kilogram
(Garhammer, J. J. Strength and Cond.Res. 7(2): 76-89. 1993)- more on
this later!!
In all these instances, the switch from stretching to active contraction
uses the elastic energy of the stretch to increase the power of the
subsequent contraction.
Rate of Force Development
As indicated above, all the most powerful movements in sport are
associated with rapid production of force.
Rate of Force Development is the term which refers to how rapidly force
is produced. It includes the period prior to external movement and
throughout the movement. Mathematically, it is given by the maximum
value of the slope of the force-time curve (where this slope is called the
Rate of Force Development, RFD). It is very important to distinguish
maximal strength from rate of force development. Maximum strength is
force produced irrespective of time, whereas rate of force development
is a quality that refers to how rapidly force is produced. In sport we are
much more concerned with rate of force development.
What constitutes a high RFD?
Based on the physiological properties of our skeletal muscles it takes
roughly 500msec to reach maximal voluntary contraction. This is very
important because in an explosive sport movement we do not have this
amount of time to produce force. We have approximately .08 to .2
second to produce force. We call this window of time the explosive
response period.
Simply described, explosiveness is the ability to create force quickly. This
is the type of explosiveness a powerlifter would need to do a squat, or
a bench press or a Deadlift. This type of explosiveness is associated more
with starting strength and acceleration strength where the movement
speed of the bar is low and muscle contractions are slow.
But in classical physics, power is defined as force times velocity, or rate
of work performed. To have true power we must create movement
quickly.
Therefore, we are most concerned with activities where the peak force
is achieved in the explosive response period in under 200 ms. For me a
simple description of Power might be:
A measure of the rate of doing work within the explosive response period
associated with fast movement.
Examples of Power in Sport
Time is a key component. Thats why Power level is greater when a
relatively light shot is put then when a heavy barbell is lifted explosively
Power output in 7.25kg shot: 5,075 W
Power output in 150kg Snatch: 3,163 W (33 W/kg)
Power output in CMJ 2,997 W and 3,109 W in SJ
Power output Bench press 300 W (4 W/kg), Squat and Deadlift 1100W
(12 W/kg)
Peak force in 7.25kg shot: 513 N
Peak force in Squat and Deadlift 1,400 N
Peak force in 150kg Snatch: 2,000 N
Peak force in CMJ: 2,000 N
Though the exerted force is less in shot put the power is greater because
of much higher speed of movement. However, remember that the
second pull of the snatch and clean (which is part of the full lift) produces
power of up to 55.8 W/kg!!!!!
Whats the difference between Power and RFD?
Explosive movements are associated with high levels of power and/or
RFD. It is possible for a movement to be explosive without being
externally fast- as in the case of a slowly moving barbell in a maximum
attempt, for example.
In its simplest form the way I look at it is, tasks where you generate
maximum power always result in a movement happening very fast. So
powerful movements have to be performed FAS
Activities requiring you to generate maximum rate of force development
may or may not result in a movement happening very fast. It is task
dependent.
Movements performed slow (but with high RFD) can still be considered
explosive. Usually, however those athletes who are capable of
producing the highest RFD are the same ones who are most powerful.

Fast movements are always explosive, but explosive movements are

not always fast