More Important Than Strength Training?

You probably know that I am a little biased towards strength training. This is not only something I love to do, but I understand the massive health benefits from a regular strength routine. If everyone in the US participated in minimum recommended amounts of strength training, I believe healthcare would be in a completely different place and we would all be better off.

Hopefully you understand the importance to strength training for not only building muscle but improving quality of life and longevity. But is there something even more important for you to incorporate than strength training?

According to some of the latest research there may be. Power training has become a new focus in health and fitness and research has shown that power may be more critical for functional tasks and longevity than strength is.

Let me start off my saying, both strength and power are critical pieces to any exercise program, but power is rarely talked about. Strength is defined as the maximal force that a muscle or group of muscles can create. Power considers both force and velocity. So it is not just how heavy of an object you are lifting but how fast you are moving it.

When people hear the term power training they usually think sports performance, Olympic lifting, or plyometrics. While those are all displays of power, they are not the only things.

Many of the functional tasks we do every day have an element of power to them. From going up and down stairs to picking up your luggage to put it in the overhead bin on a plane.

Think about what happens if you were to trip. While having strong legs helps avoid falls, if you do not have the ability to move quickly, you won’t be able to catch yourself and you may go down.

As we get older we lose strength pretty quickly. After age 60 there is an average of 3-5% loss of strength per year for inactive individuals. Research is showing that power declines even quicker. If we are not strength training we lose muscle which is why strength decreases. This also leads to power reduction, but also inefficiencies in our nervous system lead to even more of a decline.

The solution is rather simple luckily. Just like it is with improving strength. Lift weights and you build or maintain your strength. Perform power exercises and you will maintain your power.

While you can incorporate jumping exercises, sometimes this is difficult for many or may lead to injury when not done properly. Luckily many of the exercises you already do can be power exercises. You just need to perform them quicker. For example you might be doing squats. You can reduce the weight (you don’t need as much resistance to power training) and perform the exercise quicker. You can sit down as you normally would in a squat but then stand up as quickly as possible under control.

When we perform exercises quicker, we recruit different muscle fibers and activate our nervous system differently to help improve power.

Keep in mind that as always good form and technique is needed. Moving quicker is great, but comes with risk if you are not in control or have poor form.

This is why all of our clients perform a few power exercises every single training session. The combination and power and strength training might be the secret ingredient for improving functional ability and quality of life.

Try adding some power moves to your next workout.