Those of you that are training at Strength and Soul may have noticed an increase in jumping, throwing and slamming lately. We believe power is an important quality for every one of our clients. This is why the vast majority of our training starts with a power component.

 Apart from feeling good and being great at releasing frustration, power training has benefits for the general population that go further than just being able to jump on a box.

Power is a quality that can be trained just like strength or balance. In fact it is the combination of strength and speed. Usually training for power is going to be done with your own body weight or with relatively light implements. This means that the exercises can be performed quickly or with the intent to be quick. Where strength is the ability to overcome a resistance no matter how long it takes, power is overcoming the resistance as quickly as possible. This makes for far more dynamic exercises which usually feel more stimulating than exhausting.

As you can imagine power is a massively important quality for athletes who need to run, jump and change direction quickly. But for the general and aging population it is an important quality to maintain because we rely on it more than we think. From being useful in the garden to preventing falls, being able to produce force quickly is important for day to day living. For example, you are probably strong enough to walk across a busy road but using more power would get you to the other side quicker and avoid becoming roadkill.

Unfortunately as we move between ages 20-80 we lose about 40% of our muscle mass and about 30% of that is lost after the age of 50. With that goes a loss of strength but more quickly than that is the loss of power. This is hugely reduced in people that use resistance training – of course. 😁 So when you are throwing the medicine ball, battling the ropes or pushing that sled you can now know that you are putting off the loss of strength, muscle and power but also maintaining your ability to dodge traffic.