Helping athletes increase explosive power
The goal of explosive exercise training is to build enough power to ultimately move heavy weights very quickly. It helps in improving reaction time which is vital for success.
Explosive power is the catalyst to overall athletic development. To optimise power, we need a solid strength base as foundation. Explosive exercises at their final level are often referred to as plyometric or ballistic movements.
The types of exercises used to build quick, explosive power are movements that require a maximum or near-maximum power output from the athlete in a short amount of time. The goal of explosive exercise training is to build enough power to ultimately move heavy weights very quickly. It helps in improving reaction time which is vital for success in most sports.
However, explosive training can involve risk. To reduce your risk of injury, it's important to start with light weights and slow, controlled movements. The amount of weight used during a workout and the speed at which it is lifted should be increased over several weeks and many training sessions.
Other published reports suggest that in order to maximise strength, power, and
speed of movement, a combination of heavy and light explosive exercise provides superior results. Further evidence suggests that in order to maximise power output or speed of movement, the first phase of training should focus on increasing maximum strength and building a strong foundation. The second phase is devoted to power and speed training.
Plyometrics
Plyometric exercises help to improve neural capacity and the stretch reflex.
Working on plyometrics helps in jumping and change of direction. In reality, this happens constantly during most of the games. By introducing plyometric training, the athletes’ bodies and nervous system are set to maximise the plyometric qualities and produce the most force creation and force reduction in any movement patterns.
These include multi-level box jumps, hops, lateral jumps, broad jumps, and other related exercises. The main factor is to keep the volume of the jumps low but intensity high in plyometric workouts. In a single workout, our athletes will never go over 32 jumps. Chalk out a programme according to the number of impact contacts to the ground.
There are many ways to integrate plyo workout using various tools to save time and improve effectiveness. You can use medicine ball jump throws along with assisted or resisted power chords.
Power and strength training
Strong body generates more power.
Strength is the foundation for every athlete which will influence the top limit for power development. Strength and power are directly proportional to each other. Strength needs to be evaluated at regular intervals to understand power development.
Evaluating the component of strength in the weights room for whole body is critical for comprehensive power development.
Tests like squats/ deadlifts/ bench pulls/ bench press/ pull ups can be done to access strength component.
Developing explosive power
To develop power, use explosive lifts. The most valuable and safest are ancillary Olympic lifts such as the hang clean, one arm dumbbell snatch, or a dumbbell pushpress. Training the total body three days a week during the off-season will provide the desired results.
Mobility
Mobility is by far the most disregarded part of training by coaches worldwide. It is vital to having a full range of motion through movement. If athletes doesn’t have mobility, they will not be able to develop strength or power to the highest degree. If our athletes have mobility issues and that remains unresolved while training, it will cause injury.
Activities for increasing the range of motion are done before workouts and practice. Foam rolling or any soft tissue work, such as massage and mobility drills will make athletes less injury-prone.
As sporting heroes begin to grow old (they are still startlingly young, of course, by the standards of other professions), something within us accompanies them, no matter what our age. When a 35-yearold Novak Djokovic played a soon-to-be-36-year-old Rafa Nadal in the quarterfinals of the French Open, the full impact hit home. General shifts are bitter-sweet.
Roger Federer, first to 20 Grand Slam titles, is 40; he celebrates his next birthday in August, and his age might catch up with his ranking soon. He is currently 47th in the world, a sporting hero in the twilight. Even as Djokovic and Nadal were preparing for their French Open battle, he was indulging in a popular middle-age sport: getting a dog for the family.
Named Willow, it stole some of the thunder from the players on the court, if social media re- sponses are anything to go by. An addition to the family, Federer called it.
Meanwhile Djokovic and Nadal were getting ready to play each other for the 59th time in their careers. When you have three players of near-equal strength and almost similar records (Nadal had 21 Grand Slam titles before the French Open, Djokovic 20), over a long period, their meetings probably lack the intensity of a one-on-one engagement. Statistically, this is the greatest rivalry in tennis history. For comparison, Bjorn Borg and John Mcenroe played each other 14 times. Yet they inspired philosophical thoughts and books based on their conflict.
An American professor of English once argued thus: “Mcenroe is the only highly and genuinely indignant person I know of. Could more of us summon up such righteous indignation and direct it at social issues we would have Utopia within the year.” Tom Hulce, who played Mozart in the movie Amadeus said that he had used Mcenroe as his model for the genius who made his own rules and had a grouse against everybody else. Do the Spaniard Nadal and the Serb Djokovic represent elements beyond themselves? Do they stand for issues in the contemporary world which they express through their game and their personalities? Whatever their final records, are they condemned to play second and third fiddles to Federer although each has a better record in headto-head meetings with the Swiss great? Do these things matter in the end?
Borg was once quoted as saying, “Picasso did not have a 5-3 won/ lost record against Van Gogh, but I have to live with my 5-3 record against Mcenroe and see that the balance doesn’t change.” (It did, the final score was 7-7).
Djokovic was expected to beat Nadal at the French Open, but Nadal won in four, to cut the Serb’s overall lead to 30-29. When the players are young and fans are younger, such things matter. When you are older than the players, there is an elegiac quality to their meetings. Things are coming to an end, we tell ourselves, let us make the most of the heroes while they are still active and spreading joy.