What is the overall purpose of every training program? Answer - To exceed your current level of ability and improve overall performance. But before any of this can happen the very first thing you must do is exceed the demands of life! What do I mean by this? This means that life will place various demands on our bodies that we must be able to sustain for if we are unable to meet these demands injury is very likely. Our training must prepare our bodies for all the activities we require in our lifestyle by exposing the muscles and joints to load, speed, and complex positions. We have covered in great detail many times in most of our articles the 7 key movement patterns we all need as a bare minimum but what I am going to share with you today is the four key exercises that takes these foundation exercises to a new level. I have found that anyone who can complete these four exercises effectively, regardless of their age has the capacity for great athletic movement that is free of pain and limitation. And anything that life throws at them is a piece of cake.

Power training is a very unique training method that is often misunderstood, neglected and even abused in many strength programs. In simple terms power is the ability to exert maximum muscular contraction instantly in an explosive burst of movement. Most sporting and athletic activities require a fair degree of explosive power, whether it is needed to move explosively to hit a golf ball or tennis ball, jump, sprint, break away from an opponent, react to an opponents offensive tactic or handle an open-field hit, the need to produce power is an essential component. But it is not limited to sports with many daily activities also requiring this ability. We need power and speed to complete simple tasks like getting out of a chair, walking up stairs, or crossing a road quickly. When you understand that we lose this ability very quickly if nothing is done to prevent it, you begin to see just how important power training is to ALL of us. This article we explain how to not only preserve it, but improve your power no matter what age you are.

Ask anyone who plays in sports like AFL football and basketball how tough it can be to train for speed and power, yet at the same time try to improve your fitness endurance capacity. Many sports demand that you have high levels of strength and power and be able to sustain these repeated bursts in games that last between 2-3 hours. Physiologically the two processes of building strength, power, and speed versus endurance are completely opposed to each other and training both methods at the same time cancels out their effectiveness. This is the equivalent of trying to be a 100m sprinter and a marathon runner at the same time! All good strength coaches and elite athletes are aware of this principle and know that to improve performance these two opposing methods are best trained on their own which is known as periodization. Unfortunately, sporting codes that run for several months of the year do not allow for this perfect recipe to be adopted. Compromises must be made, and usually, it is strength, power, and speed sacrificed for fitness and endurance. But is there a way you can minimize the losses of strength and power by adopting smarter implementation of your fitness training? This is the question we explore in this article and provide you with some simple ideas you can implement into your training that could be a real game changer.