What is explosive strength training?
High-speed strength training is a form of strength training in which the same muscle fibers are used, but the central nervous system controls the muscle fibers in a different way. In contrast to endurance training, strength training, and therefore also explosive strength training, uses the so-called white muscle fibers, which are able to build up a lot of strength for a short time, but get tired really quickly. Explosive strength training ensures a better interaction between the individual muscle fibers within a muscle as well as the different muscles of a muscle group.
How do you do explosive strength training?
In principle, explosive strength training can be done for any muscle group for which normal strength training can also be done. It is advisable to choose the weight to be moved so that it is between a quarter and half of the weight that could be moved at most once during this exercise. If this so-called “one-rep maximum” for bench press is, for example, 100kg, the weight for high-speed strength training should be between 25 and 50kg.
After an extensive warm-up, not only in general, but also of the muscles that are used during the exercise, the actual high-speed training can begin. The athlete tries to get the weight moving as quickly as possible from the rest position and to increase the speed during the exercise. When the full range of motion is reached, the weight is slowly brought back into the rest position from which the new repetition is started. An exercise in speed training should be performed in three to five sets, whereby the set should consist of five to eight repetitions.
What should be taken into account?
In explosive strength training, it is extremely important to warm up the muscles to be exercised before the actual training in order to keep the risk of injury as low as possible. In addition, it is advantageous to do a speed training only when you have already experienced a significant increase in strength of your body. Especially for beginners the simple strength training is the more effective training method. As already mentioned in the upper section, strength training and explosive strength training use the same muscle fibers, so that each strength training always includes explosive strength training and vice versa.
