How to Build Explosive compel and Power

If you are an athlete or sportsperson - from the beginner to the elite - and are serious about enhancing your functional force and power, then you need to read this article.

Functional force and power is your capability to move things (including yourself) fast - both in your sport and in your day-to-day life.

The Food Pyramid

If you're current training agenda is engine and fixed object orientated, then not only are you Not enhancing your athletic abilities, you're probably losing force and power - along with agility, co-ordination, speed, and flexibility.

Want to know the solution?

You need to forget about 'traditional' gym training. By traditional, I mean body-building. Remember that most gym training was born out of the 'Arnie' era. Now nothing against the big man, but unless you're a body-builder you surely shouldn't be training like one. In fact, even Arie knew the value of using his own body weight and free weights to sculpt and build his physique.

Despite this, our 'idea' of how to train still seems to be stuck in the 80's and in machine-based exercise.

Well, we're in 2007 now and for some reason, when I look around the gym I still see the majority of people, both male and female, training like bodybuilder's.

This is partly because many citizen simply don't know where to start and so they copy the majority are up to. In some ways, this does make sense, as it's great to do something 'easy' like sit on a machine, then risk hurting yourself if you don't know what you're doing, or don't have man there to guide you.

But the main imagine that citizen continue to use machines, even when they've been in the gym along while, is that they're easy. Mindless. You could do engine weights in your sleep, couldn't you? No mental required. It doesn't take much understanding to stick a pin in a rack, sit down and start pushing something forward and back or up and down. God forbid you should ever try a different direction, like - oh, I don't know - the way your muscle fibres run! Hell, some of these machines even give you a seatbelt. After all, why would you want to use your own core when you can set up a fake one?

Long story short: machines train the big muscles, the beach muscles, and they even do this to only a limited extent. Your body is designed to work with teams of muscles both big and small operating alongside each other.

As any kind of athlete - novice to elite - in order to enhance speed and power, you surely must design the capability to engage your stabilising muscles (often these forgotten muscles originate the most power), and on top of this you need co-ordination, stability and agility in order to surely push to the max in your sport. Machines just ain't gonna supply that for you!

Here's what you need to do instead.

Start with what I call the 'foundation movement patterns', and select an exercise that is a basic definition of each. There are seven foundation movement patterns, on which every exercise you do is built. Out of these seven movements you can surely originate thousands of exercises and routines to design power and speed. I've listed them here, with an idea of some exercises for each.

Movement - exercise - Exercise
Squat Squat Overhead squat
Lunge Lunge Step-up
Push Cable push Chest press on ball
Pull Cable pull Renegade row
Bend Deadlift Barbell snatch
Twist Russian twist on ball Wood Chop
Gait Run Sprint

I'm guessing you may be familiar with some of these exercises, and a limited unsure about a couple of them. I won't be going into exercise descriptions in this article, but feel free to email me at the address below if you'd like to ask about any of the above.

Think about this though: if you are an athlete who is at all serious about training for speed and power, you should not only be familiar with, but also fairly adept at, all of the above movements and exercises.

If you're neglecting any of the above foundation patterns, you're only training to a limited ability. Here's some more food for thought: most machines cover only pushing, pulling and (maybe) squatting. I guess if you add a treadmill in, you've got gait. So if you train with machines, you're training around half of your body's needs. Add in the fact that machines allow you to move in only one direction, when your body is designed to go in 3 main directions and a host of 'in betweens', and you're pretty much training to around 17 or 18% of your ability.

How would you like to enhance your speed and power by around 80%?

But wait, there's more!

Learning to train without machines will not only enhance speed and power dramatically, but will also enhance your strength, agility, stability, co-ordination. Plus (yes, there's still more!), it will trim and tone your body pretty damn quickly.

Now that you have an idea of where to start, it's time for the hard work to begin.

If you're not used to training in this way, it's advisable to find a instructor to help you out.

How do you find the best trainer? Watch them with their clients, or training themselves, and you'll get a pretty fair idea of either they can help you out. You can also go for a instructor with approved qualifications, such as Chek qualifications (http://www.chekinstitute.com to find a practitioner in your area).

If you've already tried some of these exercises before, here's a few pointers to start expanding power and force today:

o Drop the weight back and work on form.

o Build the foundation first. Learn to control all movement from your centre.

Learn how to kick off your core in a collection of movement's. To kick off your core, get back to basics. Start by lying on your back, knees bent and feet flat, and convention breathing through your nose, then drawing your belly button toward your spine on the outward breath. This is a very simplified explanation of how to kick off your core - for more detail, consult a good Personal Trainer.

o Always breathe through your nose. This allows you to speak 'intra-abdominal pressure', giving you greater power from your center, and also contributes to ideal posture.

As you've gathered, this is a pretty complicated topic, and I've surely only pointed you in the right direction. Please remember that the exercises I've discussed here want a basic knowledge of training, movement and self-awareness in order to be performed without risk of injury. I'm not saying go back to the machines if you're unsure of yourself! But do think that an speculation in a instructor is an speculation in not just your sport, but also your long-term capability to move with ease and function.

How to Build Explosive compel and Power