What is power and why should you care? If you are an athlete, your ability to be powerful is often the crux of performance. Power is fundamental to performance because it directly impacts explosiveness, speed, and strength—all massively important components in most sports. Whether your focus is strength, speed or endurance sport, improving your power is a game changer to success.

So how do you build that? You know if you want to build stronger legs, you squat. If you want better coordination, you work on your agility. But what should be the training focus for improved power? Take your pick at any of the exercises below and get good at them. And if you need help, head over to the peak strength app where we take the guesswork out of it for you.

Clean

Hang clean, power clean, clean off a box… There are many ways to skin a cat. What matters is that you just do it. Regularly adding cleans to training will be massively beneficial to your explosive gains. Why is that? When you clean you are focusing on generating force off the earth through your hips. The requirement for the most power in order to get the bar from a dead stop position to your shoulders is often full extension of ankles, knees and hips.

You need a strong push off the ground, a strong pull with your arms, and a strong back to keep your chest up and the bar close. Most importantly, every time you train a clean you are refining your ability to be explosive. The physical component as well as the neuromuscular component is getting trained rep after rep.

Another way a clean can be an important exercise in improving power for athletic performance is the use of your hips to move the bar. This requires coordination and general strength. Think about simply picking up a heavy barbell and reverse bicep curling it to your shoulders. Eventually, the weight being too heavy is a limiting factor and it's not going to be possible. But now we use the power that our hips can generate to get that bar higher, this movement becomes a heck of a lot easier than that reverse bicep curl option.

Yes, training a variation of the clean is going to improve your explosiveness but this exercise will also, over time, improve your coordination, agility, balance, speed and dynamic trunk control. The translation from lift to sport application has a high return on investment.

To perform the clean, start from a hang position, set up with 1-2 blocks or even the high hang. No matter the starting position, the important part is that the bar is at a dead stop before the pull begins. If working from a hang, the athlete should do their best to not “cheat” the rep by slightly leaning forward and gaining momentum from the stretch in the hamstrings before initiating the pull. Once the pull begins, look for that full extension of ankles, knees and hips while getting as vertical as possible before quickly dropping into a quarter or full squat and catching the bar on your shoulders. Dynamic trunk control, body awareness with elbows high and a tight back will ultimately help make this lift feel effortless and with each rep you are training explosive power.

Trap Bar Deadlift

Staying in the realm of weight training, the trap bar deadlift is one movement that has massive impacts on improving power for athletics. The unique set up of this variation of the deadlift allows a more upright torso which puts a bigger emphasis on hip drive and quads. This setup also tends to alleviate some of the pressure in the lower back which is typically experienced with conventional deadlifts.

Taking this movement a step further, you can make trap bar deadlifts into a dynamic exercise. To do this you first focus on ensuring technique and form is dialed. From there you simply drop the load being used, keep that perfect form in mind and drive through the heels to explode upwards as quickly as possible. The goal is to lift the weight with as much speed as possible so you may even find yourself leaving the ground. The speed is the focus rather than lifting a heavy load with this lift.

For both a dynamic or traditional trap bar deadlift, power improvements come not only from the drive off the ground requiring the hips and quads to work but also this setup allows for a more explosive movement pattern, which is very similar to the force and drive needed for sports like sprinting, jumping, and even cutting in ball sports.

Seated Box Jumps

Most often, explosive power is found through the lower body. Seated box jumps help train the major muscle groups needed for lower body power. The quads, hamstrings and glutes will all be recruited in this movement pattern.

Starting from a seated position requires the power to come from your muscle alone unlike a standing box jump. With a typical box jump, the athlete will start from standing and often drop into a quarter squat before exploding to the top of the box. Here, the seated position takes away the ability to gain power from the stored elastic energy of that quarter squat and eliminates the stretch shortening cycle that typically aids in generating power.

Start from a dead stop, seated position with feet about hip width apart. Swing the arms back as your torso slightly leans forward and drive off the ground to land on an elevated surface. It is important to use a box or a platform at a comfortable height so you are able to land with soft feet on the elevated surface.

Athletes are developing raw power and explosiveness with seated box jumps which can ultimately help athletes improve the vertical jump, acceleration and overall lower body strength.

Hurdle Jumps

In general, plyometrics are a great addition to training protocols to improve power for performance. Hurdle hops are one of the plyometric exercises that have a big return on investment.

Not only do hurdle hops help improve your lower body strength but they also work on helping improve the athletes elasticity. This is important for power because it allows muscles and tendons to store and release energy more efficiently. This leads to an improvement in explosiveness in other movements like jumping, changing direction, and sprinting. Improving elasticity is also important because it reduces the time spent on the ground between movements. As an athlete this can be helpful for improving reactive strength which most sports require.

Hurdle hops are also a beneficial addition to training because of the potential improvements in speed and agility alongside the focus here- improved power.

To execute hurdle hops, set up a series of hurdles each about hip height to start. Make sure the hurdles are separated just far enough so that there is minimal time spent on the ground before you explode to hop over the next hurdle. The goal is to jump over one, spend as little time possible before you rebound to hop over the next, so on and so forth. You are looking to test your body's ability to absorb and immediately reapply force on the ground in order to perform one hurdle after the next.

Dynamic Push Ups

You can't forget about the upper body explosive power that is necessary in sport. A no equipment needed movement is even better. Dynamic push ups are a great tool to add to your training regimen. Whether you are simply focusing on the rebound off an 18” stack of plates or trying to go a bit more challenging and performing these to a higher box or benches, this dynamic movement is an ideal option for improving upper body power, speed and agility.

Start with your feet on the ground and hands on top of the elevated surface. From there you will drop to the ground and catch yourself in the bottom of your push up. Similar to hurdle hops where you want to minimize the time spent on the ground, just as quickly as your hands hit the ground you want to push off and try to land back up on the elevated surface. Football, volleyball, basketball players and even MMA fighters may find this to be a helpful exercise.

Med Ball Slams

This full body power exercise focuses mostly on shoulders, dynamic trunk control and legs. Slamming the ball with the intensity needed to actually improve power will also improve coordination, timing, and reactive strength. Athletes in sports like throwing, jumping and sprinting need speed and force to perform their best.

To complete a med ball slam, start with feet shoulder width apart and knees slightly bent. Keeping the core tight, bring the ball high overhead, shooting for triple extension of ankles, knees and hips similar to a clean. Rise on your toes to generate maximum power from the legs and trunk.

Using your core and entire body, slam the ball straight down in front of you making sure to bend the knees to follow thru. If the ball bounces, catch it as it comes back up and try to quickly reach that triple extension and repeat another rep. If there is no bounce, squat down and quickly pick the ball up to perform another rep.

Sprinting

Sprinting is a great way to build power because it requires maximum output of force often in a short period of time. Acceleration from a dead stop to reaching top end speed requires a large effort to produce force off the ground generated from the hips, glutes, quads and hamstrings. Also worth mentioning how sprinting improves core stability and coordination as the entire body works to maintain balance and even maintain posture at high speeds. Consistent sprint training translates to greater power and agility, benefiting athletes in nearly every sport.

There is no denying how important power is in sport. If you want to excel and ultimately reach your full potential in sport, making sure you train for peak athleticism is important. Focusing on improving power with the wide array of exercises that can help you level up is something we suggest you not take too lightly. Whether you train some of the less common movements that improve power or some of the more basic ones, the most important thing is that you train them, period.