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Power vs Strength Training
Power, explosive, and ballistic sports select for individuals who have the appropriate inherent dynamic qualities. So, before we can say training *made* an athlete powerful or explosive we need to consider that the athlete made the sport or activity powerful or explosive.
People have inherent qualities that can be developed, but each quality comes with a ‘development potential’ for want of a better term (there may be an interplay between the individual and the nature of that quality). For instance, a fully grown individual enters basketball at 6’ 10” – there’s very little that can be done other than some sort of medieval torture to make them taller (yes, better posture, etc + you’re taller in the morning than in the evening), the development potential is effectively zero. A fully grown individual wants to learn to juggle with three balls – in a week or two they will go from not being able to juggle to being a reasonably confident juggler – the development potential is large.
It looks like quickness and agility is less improved by training than strength is. I defy any one to show me that inherent (motor firing) quickness can be improved to a significant degree in a healthy person (skill can be improved; the effective use of quickness and agility). But strength can be trained significantly.
Real explosive power, countering the resistance of an implement [shotputter] or body weight [sprinter/jumper]), the sort which is breathtaking to watch, comes from a combination of ‘quickness’ and raw strength - which quality should you focus more on?
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A youngster (potentially elite sprinter) turns up at his local track; he’s 16yrs old, he’s faster than most of his friends so he wants to try out for track and field. A coach gives him a 100m try out resulting in 12secs flat. After 8 weeks, with a couple of track sessions per week (and some basic exercises) he runs 11.4secs - he now has some idea about how to start, run relaxed, and other


fundamentals. Two and a half years later he’s running 10.5secs for 100m, faster than 99.9% of the population could ever hope to achieve. He has also put on 18lbs of solid muscle. Does he need to do ‘power’ training or strength training - or if a combination, what relative contributions?
As mentioned in an earlier post, any training modality has an opportunity cost - more effective training may be missed. It’s important for the coach to assess what gives the ‘most bang for the buck’. In an elite athlete all well-mined qualities show diminishing returns. The problem is that an athlete has finite energetic and recovery capabilities, you cannot do everything. You have to pick and choose.
Quickness against resistance requires strength. Power is just ‘fast strength’ and explosiveness is just ‘fast strength’ - do you train to move an object (an implement or your body) fast? Or do you train for more strength? Some coaches or sports scientists contend that for power, explosive and ballistic events you need to do power, explosive and ballistic training – really? You focus more on a quality which has less room for improvement? Maybe an increase in absolute and relative strength would have a larger effect?
HILL TRAINING
Runners do hill sessions for ‘strength’ not speed. Most others run hills for ‘fitness’. As far as runners are concerned (bearing in mind that a sprinter is a different animal to an endurance athlete), what strength means in the context of hills has never been properly explained. Leg strength? Aerobic strength? Lactic strength (tolerance to acidosis)? Sprint strength? Endurance strength? Psychological strength?
I’ve run hills for over twenty years and I’m still not sure in what way they’ve benefitted my running on the track. But that doesn’t mean they haven’t.


Exercisers are more concerned with overall fitness – hills are a good addition, and injects variation into an exercise program. No matter how much running (on the flat) or fitness training an individual has done, running hills will be a shock to the system. Although nothing is written in stone (any type of exercise is better than nothing) it’s better for a person to have a reasonable amount of fitness before undertaking serious hill training. Hill sessions are not intended for speed development but a complete newbie, or unfit individual, would no doubt see benefits across metrics.
A well-trained runner can run very, very close to max on each rep without sacrificing the quality of the following rep (dependent on the length of recovery between reps), less fit individuals would have to pace themselves. Indeed a sign of fitness is the ability to recover quickly after intense effort. You can ‘hurt’ yourself on each rep, and survive. The last rep is all out war. In a sense the last rep is psychologically easier as it ‘takes care of itself’ – it doesn’t matter if you near kill yourself on the last rep – you have no recovery interval to observe. You can lie down for as long as you like. It’s intense, but you get used to it.
My hill sessions were brutal, each rep basically finishing DOA. Sometimes my hamstrings would start to cramp near the top of the hill. One fellow in our group was taken to hospital – he wasn’t fit enough. After a few months off hills I completed a session in the evening with my friends; for hours after my pulse rate was racing, I had a headache and couldn’t sleep – I phoned my best friend because I thought I was going to die. The next week all was fine.
Hill training really benefits from doing with others. If you and your group have a scintilla of competitiveness or pride – you will run faster. It is psychologically harder because you know the session is going to be tough, but psychologically easier in that you ‘share the pain’, plus others in the group can take turns to lead. If someone is much faster than the rest, they will always be leading, that’s not good for them or you. It’s preferable to have a group where abilities are quite close. Run hard, hill sessions are fearsome; the more fearsome, and the more you overcome it, the better the feeling is.
When the strength drains from your legs, when you can no longer initiate strong muscular contractions - if you stop focusing and aggressively pushing yourself, it’s very easy to practically stop. So, an aggressive mindset is essential for hills. A hard hill session


is both exhilarating and frightening – but when you’ve completed a high-quality tough session, there’s no better feeling. Your training mates are your band of brothers. People say sport is fake war, maybe it is, but believe me, training is war. If you are not prepared to hurt yourself – go home.
Tip: When you find yourself slowing down near the top, rather than trying to push and extend your stride, do the opposite, consciously shorten you stride and move your arms quicker; this will increase your cadence, make you feel lighter and will increase your speed (for a while) – the equivalent of shifting to an easier gear when cycling up a hill.
A hard hill session only needs to be done once a week; twice a week if you’re not doing anything else (exercising for fitness is not the same as training for competitive sport. I have a problem with people saying they’re “training” when they are exercising, my opinion is that training is for people who are seriously pursuing a competitive goal).
Every 3rd or 4th hill session don’t do a warm-up. No cheating, run the first rep full-pelt, otherwise it would essentially be a warm- up. Running a 200m hill fast with no warm-up will feel uncomfortable and make your lungs burn. What about injury potential? Competitive athletes who are fatigued most of the time may have to be careful with this, but for fitness I recommend it. When you’re fresh, being able to run fast from scratch, with no aches or pains and creaks or groans, is a feeling like no other – it’s like you’re overcoming gravity without any effort. This is when running becomes the pure expression of freedom – Satori.
Without a warm-up your body has to cope with a sudden extreme demand. Young humans and animals in the wild can go from rest to full pelt in the blink of an eye. It’s one of the hallmarks of youth and dynamic vitality that the body can cope with sudden changes in conditions. Doing a hill session without a warm-up will *most likely* lead to a poorer session overall, the whole session will probably feel more uncomfortable especially if the rest intervals are short - but a no warm-up session is a different kind of session. Call it ‘under the radar’ conditioning. You don’t want to prepare the body for work, you want to surprise it. As you age it takes more time to ‘get going’, so just like doing resistance training is good to combat sarcopenia, you need to challenge the systemic deterioration from aging.


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Generally, a hill session involves acidosis/oxygen debt to a greater or lesser extent – 6 x 150m+ hills with 3 mins between doesn’t involve ‘all-out’ sprinting but a high sub-max. Pure sprint sessions (if that is possible on a hill – we’ll call it “100% effort”) involve fast short reps with long recoveries where there is no acidosis, or at least, complete recovery (sort of) between reps.
Some suggestions:
1/ Find a reasonably steep hill. Run up for 150m. Slowly walk down (3/4mins). The session is over when you’ve completed six runs
2/ 100/150m hill – run up fast; jog for 15secs at the top (on flat) – sprint 100m. Repeat four times. 3/ 40m; 80m; 150m; 200m – slow walk back recovery. 3 sets – 8mins btwn sets
4/ 8 x 250m – 5mins btwn
5/ 50m; 100m; 150m; 200m; 150m 100m; 50m; 250m – 4 mins btwn
6/ 2 x (5 x 180m) – 4mins btwn reps. 10 mins btwn sets
7/ 6 x 280m – 6 mins btwn
8/ 50m; 100m; 50m; 100m; 50m; 100m – 4mins bwtn. Repeat after 10mins. 9/ 3 x (100m; 150m; 200m; 250m) – 4mins btwn reps. 8 mins btwn sets


10/ 3 x (4 x 150m) – 4mins btwn reps. 6 mins btwn sets
These sessions are just ideas – the design of a session is only limited by your imagination.
Timing your repetitions and rest intervals removes all doubt about your progression. Of course, you don’t have to time, but I’ve found timing keeps you focused when the session starts getting tough. Without timing there can be a lot of self-kiddology – your mind starts trying to bullshit you.
Your access to a suitable hill determines the nature of the hill; length, slope and surface. One could argue that flatter hills are easier, but what makes a session tough is the (sustained) effort you put in, However, we must assume that there is an additional benefit to running hills otherwise there would be no point doing them. So, a run of 100% effort over 200m on a hill is different to 100% effort on the flat. There is a greater vertical element (gravity) involved, demanding different muscular qualities. So, it’s not just quality of effort but the nature of the effort.
A good grip is necessary for hill training on grass, road or off-road – there’s nothing worse than the sensation of slipping, plus it wastes your energy. A well-known 1980’s British Olympic middle-distance runner used to do some of his hill training on a giant sand dune (named, ‘the Big Dipper’) at his local beach. Sand training is tough as the sand absorbs your energy.
On a recent sea-fishing trip I noticed a group of people doing sessions on a pebble beach. In pairs, they ran down a beach each holding a handle of a large plastic bucket. Before running back up they filled the bucket with sea-water – pretty difficult as running up a pebble beach is tough anyway. Again, hill session variations are limited to your imagination.
Is it really necessary to add extra weight to make your hill session even tougher? As a former runner, I don’t think so – but hell, there are no rules, do whatever takes your fancy. Just remember, the hill is the resistance, and the steeper the hill the more the resistance.


ANAEROBICS JULY 2018