If there is no aspect of your workout that moves explosively there is a huge hole in your training program. The ramifications for your body are far worse than skipping your pre-lift stretching routine.
(Source: bajiroo.com)
There are basically two paradigms with explosive work:
- Must I?
- I force myself to do it because I know the value.
You want to graduate to the second approach as quickly as possible.
The importance of explosive training rests on the school that life is ultimately an explosive experience, but also that explosive movement is germane to being strong (not bulky, ladies) and maintaining your independence later in life.
(Source: neilgelb.com)
Life is Explosive
With functional movement, we tend to think of strength and balance as critical. These two contributors to movement are important, but what about when we slip?
Life is full of loose sand, curbs that seemed much lower, cracks in sidewalks, ice on the… well, you get the idea. Life is unpredictable.
Not falling when life throws us obstacles, is completely dependent on our ability to move explosively.
When we trip, for example, not hitting the ground is a simple matter of shifting our base of support back under our center of gravity, explosively.
(Source: lockerdome.com)
Acceleration is Everything
When it comes to building your strength, there are many moving parts, literally. A big part of what affords you the most strength production is how well you can move a given weight from zero velocity to any velocity.
Getting the load from that zero point is the hardest part when your loads start approaching the limits of your strength. If you can’t move it from a stop, then you’re not lifting anything; you’re being pinned by that weight.
Acclimating your body to the stresses associated with driving a weight explosively, in a controlled manner, will break you through strength plateaus.
(Source: huffingtonpost.com)
It’s the First Thing we Lose
The true moment we become adults is the first time we try to hop a fence, landing on our backs or opt out seeing the future of our demise.
At some point, we stop “playing” as we once did. Ironically, from this point forward we are in a downward fall of being careful, losing our explosiveness.
Without intervention, it only gets worse, until later in life we find falls are a regular part of life. This is one-way hips are shattered, but it doesn’t have to be this way.
(Source: liberidileggere.com)
The good news is, you don’t need to put explosive work into every lift. You don’t even need to bake it into every workout, but it would be nice. One exercise every workout, where you explode through a range of motion, will keep your body ready for that movement later.
You should do at least three sets of whatever it is, but if you are doing five sets for your workout, then do five sets of your explosive work too.
Look at this way: every quality explosive movement you make today is another notch in strength you will have tomorrow.