Hard to say, as I'm no expert on such things, butI have 2 articles for you to read - that will give you something to chew on, and help steer your training
Power Training Basics
by Dietrich Buchenholz
Being successful as an athlete is simple; How much power can you produce? Strength development is one piece to solving the puzzle but it’s definitely not the “holy grail” of performance development. Sure, some coaches may trick you into thinking they know a lot about “sports training” by flooding your mind with their knowledge of “strength training”. But don’t be scared to use the “bullshit meter” if you have to. Just ask yourself; “Does it make me a better player on the field?” Forget about the numbers in the gym, they’re pointless. Does it improve your stats on the field? In other words, don’t worry about the fact your strength coach keeps giving you shit because he can “out-squat” you. If he’s really a bad ass then why can you shake him like Shakira’s booty on the playing field? What you need to worry about is not wasting your efforts in pursuit of your goals. Make the most of your time and you will go the furthest- Very simple advice to train and live by.
I always laugh when NFL strength coaches bitch about how weak their new recruits are and how crappy these athletes old strength programs must have been. These strength coaches obviously don’t have a clue! The athletes’ “piss-poor strength” was good enough to land him a job in the NFL, right? I mean, why didn’t you just draft the insanely strong guy if that’s what’s so important? Trust me, any one of these gym freaks would be glad to give up their nighttime telemarketing job to play in the NFL. The reason you picked up the “weak guy” is because he is powerful as hell. And if you think that the stronger you get the more powerful you’re automatically going to become, get out of the profession now while you’re dignity is still in check!
Bottom line: the more some of you learn about Power the more you realize your strength training efforts have been an over-kill! Heck, you may even be surprised to learn how your strength training efforts have actually hindered your development on the playing field!
“Strength”
“Gee, that’s a strong firecracker you got there!”
Sit in the stands and watch an athletic event- any athletic event- and you’re sure to hear onlookers make claims like; “Boy, that athlete has a strong arm”…or “Look at how strong his leg is!” But unless you’re sitting in the stands of a powerlifting meet their claims of “strength” are often misplaced. What they are seeing is “power”, not strength. Ever see Pedro Martinez throw a baseball? Forget the fact that he can light up a catcher’s glove like a Christmas tree…the guy looks like he should be selling blankets on the beaches of Cancun, not striking out the likes of Jason Giambi, Barry Bonds and Albert Pujols. Ever see Kim Collins run a 100 meters? Once you get past the fact you can literally see the food digesting in his gut if he’s wearing a wifebeater (he’s transparent with his shirt off), it’s hard to ignore the fact that he rakes the track like a madman! Strength? Ha! Put it this way, the guy thinks “box squatting” means sitting down to take a shit.
The truth is that there are different types of “strength”. For instance, if you are looking to develop “explosive-strength” then your efforts should center-around “strength-speed” work. But if you need to raise your “explosive-power” development you would be better served with “speed-strength” work (hold on, I’ll answer your questions in a second). All in all, there are four main types of “strength” work you can employ: “absolute-strength”, “strength-endurance”, “strength-speed”, and “speed-strength”. As a side note, there are two other modalities of work you can employ as an athlete- “restorative warm-up” exercises and “speed endurance” exercises.
Most people understand that absolute-strength is simply a test of how much weight you can lift, and these same people have usually learned by now that strength-endurance is a measure of how much force you can continually produce over a given interval. But most people get confused about strength-speed versus speed-strength, so let’s turn our attention there.
“Power Percents”
The most important value to know when weight training is not how much you can lift but at what percent of your max strength do you produce peak power. This is the divide between speed-strength work and strength-speed work. Research has shown that athletes may put out peak power in a range of 51% AW 1RM and 74% AW 1RM (with some athletes producing peak power with slightly lower or higher values). Yes, this means that you can raise or lower your relative power output. Just as interesting to note is the fact that you can increase the “time to rise” of power achievement (but more on that latter). Getting back to what I was saying, if you use my Appropriated-Weight techniques detailed in “The Sports Book” then you will be able to use the same percents for every movement in the gym. If not, you will have no way of knowing if the athlete is even strong enough to begin power training methods!
The reason why most research keeps drawing out different conclusions about how much weight an athlete needs to work with to achieve peak power in the gym is because they are using straight-weight percents, not appropriated-weight percents. Appropriation of weight simply means that you are taking the athletes bodyweight into consideration for a given movement. For instance, an athlete will have to lift 92% of his bodyweight in addition to bar weight in the squat, and approximately 8% of his bodyweight in addition to bar weight in the bench press. You should already be able to see why using the same straight-weight power-percents for the upper body and lower body is a huge mistake!
As mentioned earlier, most athletes will put out peak power within the range of 51% and 74% of their Appropriated-Weight one rep max (or “AW 1RM” for short). Athletes who have had a long stay with strength training methods will put out peak power with lower percents than athletes who have been using more power based training protocols. In practical terms, this means that you could very well have a pair of 200 lb athletes, one of them a 300 lbs bencher and the other a 442 lbs bencher, and they both produce the same amount of power! That is, they are both moving 217 lbs just as fast as one another even though one guy is obviously much stronger. Which if you put it into boxing terms, the 442 lb bencher had better be stronger because he’ll need to keep pushing himself up from off the canvas!
Even though this example is extreme, there are literally countless athletes with this problem. They pack the strength but lack the power! You will be able to understand this more as we take a look at the neuro-muscular changes in relation to different regimes of strength in future editions of “The Buchenholz Method: Power Training!” series.
Strength-Speed Training
The purpose of strength-speed training is to develop “explosive-strength”, which is defined as “the ability to realize strength quickly”. What this really means is that you will be increasing your “rate of force development”(RFD). Take a pair of NFL lineman who weigh the same and squat the same, both with sound technique and nor a leverage advantage to either one. The one who is going to win the battle at the line of scrimmage is the one who has better explosive-strength development. This is not only because he is going to be delivering more force to his opponent but also because he will reach this point of peak force output quicker. That, my friends, is like playing No-Limit Poker with a pair of Aces up your sleeve! That, my friends, is explosive-strength development!
AW percents for strength-speed training are 20% above your peak power output. Since the average athlete will put out peak power with 63% AW 1RM, the general guideline is to use 63-83% AW 1RM for your strength-speed work. However, some less-explosive athletes will want to use 51-71% AW weights and some more-explosive athletes, such as basketball players, may be better served with 74-94% AW 1RM when looking to develop explosive-strength. Again, it all comes back to your relative-power output in respect to your absolute-strength.
Speed-Strength Training
The purpose of speed-strength training is to develop “explosive-power”, or “the ability to achieve peak velocity as early in the rebound action of the movement as possible”. What’s the difference between an elite baseball player and an elite softball player? We’ve tested them both to be able to swing over 90 mph with a baseball bat, but only the baseball players had enough rate of force development to accelerate the bat head fast enough to achieve peak velocity rapidly after the start of the swing. The softball players had a longer acceleration track, not to mention much slower reaction time scores. It should be noted at this point that explosive-strength development and explosive-power development are both reliant on proficient rate of force development display.
Moreover, take a pair of baseball players and have them bat off the same pitcher, and cut out any other variables you can think of (such as pitch type, pitch location, etc). Assuming both of them are able to put out the same amount of power, the one who can realize it sooner will have the advantage. Watch a living-immortal like Barry Bonds hit and you know what I’m talking about. The ball looks like it’s almost past his front knee before he even thinks about swinging! The critical factor isn’t his 95 mph bat speed- lots of guys do that- the critical factor is his ability to go from 0 to 95 mph with his bat head quicker than most of us “humans” can blink an eyelash! That, my friends, is explosive-power! The critical factor is teaching your system to develop force faster. You do this by stimulating your neuromuscular system to achieve peak-twitch as quickly as possible within the given movement.
Let’s take another example- not so much to help you but because I’m having fun with these! You have two basketball players who can jump just as high as one another. They are driving the lane stride-for-stride, one on offense and one on defense. The offensive player can achieve peak-twtich 20 ms into the concentric phase of the jump and the defensive player takes 45 ms into the concentric portion of the jump to achieve peak-twitch. Knowing that the quicker the achievement of peak-twitch the greater the rate of force development of the athlete (which means the quicker the athlete will achieve peak velocity and consequently get off the ground quicker); Who do you think is going to win this battle? Can you smell chin-nuts, anyone?
The fact is that there are lots of baseball players who can swing 90 mph and lots of basketball players who can jump 35 inches. But when they have to display these abilities at “game speed” only a few of them survive. Why? Poor explosive-power development (read: not enough speed-strength work in their training programs).
Speed-strength training embodies everything below your relative-peak power AW percent. The goal is two-fold: teach your system to activate peak-twitch sooner and teach your system to release peak tension quicker. Most athletes will work with 63% AW 1RM and below, with only 43%-63% AW 1RM having a strong direct-impact on their peak power scores and explosive-strength development (even though all speed-strength percents will feed into explosive-power development). Again, some athletes may work with 54-74% AW 1RM to influence their relative power output whereas others need to work with 31-51% AW 1RM.
Closing Thoughts
It’s easy for us as coaches to sit back and yell “quick feet” or “explode to the ball.” But is any of this really doing the athlete any good? Let’s say an athlete weighs 200 lbs and squats 150 lbs. Is he strong enough to move quickly, let alone start a speed-strength training program?
The answer is “no!” Always take the lower AW percent value to answer these types of questions. For him, this means that he squats 334 lbs(bodyweight included). 51% of that is 170.34 lbs. Take out his bodyweight (92% of 200 lbs, or 184 lbs) and you can see that he would have to work with negative-weights (-13.66 lbs) to try and develop explosive-power! Now you can either chop off an arm or train him in an exo-skeleton, but why not just get him strong! Remember, a good coach never has to scream about technique because all technical aspects are rooted in the nervous system. In other words, manipulate your nervous system properly and you will take care of your technical problems!
Finally, remember what Alexsei Medvedyev said when looking to build peak power; “there are no special exercises to develop speed or strength; they all develop speed-strength to a greater or lesser extent.” Training is a relatively simple thing to do. Sure your training prescriptions have to get more and more precise the closer you get to achieving the most of your performance capacity. But if you ever get confused don’t go digging deeper and deeper for answers, take a step back to make sure you’re headed in the right direction to begin with!
Hopefully some of these “Power Training Basics” have given you a nice refreshing break from Flex Fantasy Magazine, and maybe even helped steer you back on course!
Please Scroll Down to See Forums Below 
