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Power and explosiveness can be defined as your body's ability to exert or transfer strength quickly and efficiently.
The athletes who are able to produce more power throughout their body, and perform explosive actions like sprints, changes of direction, and acceleration, are the athletes who dominate physically in their sport.
If you want to be a better player on the football pitch, you should be spending a quality amount of time training your power in the weight room.
Technique in the modern game can only get you so far. And although one could argue that players like Busquets, Pirlo, and Iniesta were players who weren't what you would call 'powerful' players, they were still more athletic and explosive than your average professional.
Since football is one of the most physically demanding sports in the world, you must train your body to meet those demands so that you can compete with your opponents.
In this blog post, you will learn the basics on developing power and explosiveness, and how the training you do in the weight room transfers to your performance on the pitch.
How Does Power Translate Onto On-Field Performance?
Some typical actions that you might encounter in a football match that require explosive power are things such as jumping up for an Ariel duel, accelerating into an open space and catching the defenders off guard, reacting to an unpredictable attacker and having to change your direction and accelerate, a full-field sprint to support the counter, and many many more similar actions.
By developing your power in the weight room, you can see improvements in your vertical jump, your sprint speed, your 'first step' when accelerating, and your ability to change direction.
How to Improve Power
1) Heavy Compound Exercises
Compound exercises are one of the most essential things you should be doing if you're looking to build power.
Compound exercises are exercises that require strength from many muscle groups, instead of isolating one specific muscle.
The reason why compound weight training is important for building power, is because of the fact that they require a large amount of raw strength and also many different muscle groups and chains to work together in order to lift the weight.
Your typical Barbell Back Squat, for example, is great because it works your major lower body muscle groups such as your quads, glutes, and hamstrings, and the heavier in weight you go, the more strength your body will need to exert into the ground in order to fight against the resistance caused by gravity.
By progressively overloading and increasing your strength in compound lifts, the more force your body will be able to exert into the floor.
This is the foundation for developing sport-specific power.
Remember that power is your body's ability to exert force quickly and efficiently. So the more raw strength you have, the more force you are able to exert into the ground efficiently.
2) Plyometric Exercises
Building raw strength is important for power development, but being able to squat a large amount is useless if you're not able to transfer all of that strength and force from the compound lifts into a sports-specific action.
This is where plyometrics come in to play.
Plyometrics are explosive movements where you are transferring strength and power into a jump or bound by rapidly contracting and lengthening muscle groups.
Examples of plyometrics include squat jumps, alternating lunges, tuck jumps, and exercises that involve jumping.
Plyometrics are essential for building power and explosiveness because they are exercises that teach your body how to properly extend and contract different muscle groups in an explosive manner.
They teach your neuromuscular system to be able to efficiently release large amount of stored elastic potential energy in your contracted muscles as force to propel you up by lengthening the contracted muscles.
Plyometrics should be added to your strength training routine 2-3 times a week, with the goal of improving your body's ability to absorb force, and be able to efficiently reproduce it.
For 5 essential plyometric exercises that you should be using in your training, check out the YouTube Video below.
3) Sprint More
One of the most underrated exercises to improve your total body power and explosiveness are sprints.
Sprints are one of the most taxing exercises you can do on your body, and they require a tremendous amount of energy as well as force and power with each and every step.
Just like plyometrics, sprinting challenges your neuromuscular system by requiring powerful and explosive transitions in the length and contractions of your muscle fibers.
Sprinting is also a more sports specific exercise that you will have to do in a game, so by improving your sprints, you will be improving sport specific power.
A good sprint workout you can try is to set two gates 30-yards apart, and to sprint those 30-yards for about 5-10 times. With about two minutes to a minute rest in between to allow your muscles to be ready for the next sprint.
4) Strengthen Your Core
Strengthening your core is an important part in power development.
Your core is your body's most important muscle group. Think of it as the central system where every other muscle and movement stems from.
Your core is responsible for how effectively you are able to absorb force, and be able to transfer and reproduce more force.
Having a strong core that is able to efficiently absorb power and be able to transfer that power into another athletic action, such as a jump, sprint, or change of direction, will help you have an athletic edge over your opponents on the pitch.
You should be looking to train your core directly around 2-3 times a week. You SHOULD NOT be looking to do 'ab workouts' every single day.
The fitness community has become obsessed with 'six pack ab workouts' doing a crazy amount of sit ups and crunches to achieve that aesthetic, and unfortunately, this mindset has rubbed off on athletes as well.
As athletes, we should be looking to train our core by doing exercises that resist extension or rotation.
Your core is responsible for your body's proprioception and it's ability to control it's body, so by challenging your core to resist external movements that could disrupt that control will allow you to build strength in your stabilizer muscles.
The more balance and control you have over your body and your movements, the more efficiently you will be able to produce force and strength throughout your limbs stemming from your core.
For a full core workout for footballers, check out this YouTube video below:
How Often Do I Train Power in A Week?
Training your power and explosiveness is heavily taxing on your body and your neuromuscular system, so doing too much power training could lead to a lack of energy, a lack of concentration and focus, which is essential for building power and being able to exert force, and it could lead to overworking your muscles which can lead to injuries.
You should be looking to apply each of the tips above 2-3 times a week each, preferably keeping them around the same day on your most intense training days.
This means you will be weightlifting 2-3 times a week, (check this link for the best muscle split an athlete should do in the gym), plyometrics 2-3 times a week, max speed sprints 2-3 times a week, and direct core training 2-3 times a week.
I hope this helps! If you would like a FREE SPEED GUIDE, then click the link and download!
Alex from GoGrind Soccer Signing off...
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