So today I hung out on the range with my old team at the rifle range and happen to get into a pretty funny debate with a Marine about strength and power. He told me that as a Marine he would rather be strong than have power. As he told me this I almost fell to the ground in disbelief. So this brings me to this post about Strength vs Power.
The word power is commonly misused or misunderstood. The true meaning of power is the ability to generate as much force as possible. Examples of power are a golf tee off, a vertical jump, Olympic Clean and Jerk, and swinging a baseball bat. Basically if you do this things slowly, they just wont work out well for you. Strength, on the other hand, is the ability to generate as much force as possible with no concern for the factor of time. A 1RM bench press or a 1RM deadlift are examples of pure strength movements. It doesn't matter how long it takes to complete these tasks. All that matters is that it gets completed- doing it slowly doesn't take away of the success of the lift.
Power, which is often referred to as speed-strength, is an important factor in sporting activities, but it is also used in daily activities such as moving fast, running up a flight of stairs, keeping of with your kids, moving to a shooting position under fire, increased work capacity, and increased overall body strength.
The simple equations to determine the strength and power in a specific exercise are as follows:
Bench press performance..
Strength (work) = mass x distance
Example: 300 pound bench press that moves 2.5 feet
300 x 2.5ft= 750 units of work
Power= work / time
The same bench press takes about 3 seconds to complete
750 work units / 3 seconds= 250 units of power
Now let's compare that performance to 100lb power clean
Strength (work)= mass x distance
100lb power clean that moves 5 feet
100 x 5ft= 500 units of work
Power= work / time
Same power clean takes 1 second to complete
500 work units / 1 second= 500 units of power
Power exercises will always have higher amounts of power units than traditional strength exercises regardless of load simply due to the time factor.
So after explaining this to the Marine he had a better understanding why his 300lb bench press wasn't an awesome feat of strength in my eyes( plus I have a 385lb bench that I didn't tell him about when he out weighed me by about 20 pounds). Post to comments...
The word power is commonly misused or misunderstood. The true meaning of power is the ability to generate as much force as possible. Examples of power are a golf tee off, a vertical jump, Olympic Clean and Jerk, and swinging a baseball bat. Basically if you do this things slowly, they just wont work out well for you. Strength, on the other hand, is the ability to generate as much force as possible with no concern for the factor of time. A 1RM bench press or a 1RM deadlift are examples of pure strength movements. It doesn't matter how long it takes to complete these tasks. All that matters is that it gets completed- doing it slowly doesn't take away of the success of the lift.
Power, which is often referred to as speed-strength, is an important factor in sporting activities, but it is also used in daily activities such as moving fast, running up a flight of stairs, keeping of with your kids, moving to a shooting position under fire, increased work capacity, and increased overall body strength.
The simple equations to determine the strength and power in a specific exercise are as follows:
Bench press performance..
Strength (work) = mass x distance
Example: 300 pound bench press that moves 2.5 feet
300 x 2.5ft= 750 units of work
Power= work / time
The same bench press takes about 3 seconds to complete
750 work units / 3 seconds= 250 units of power
Now let's compare that performance to 100lb power clean
Strength (work)= mass x distance
100lb power clean that moves 5 feet
100 x 5ft= 500 units of work
Power= work / time
Same power clean takes 1 second to complete
500 work units / 1 second= 500 units of power
Power exercises will always have higher amounts of power units than traditional strength exercises regardless of load simply due to the time factor.
So after explaining this to the Marine he had a better understanding why his 300lb bench press wasn't an awesome feat of strength in my eyes( plus I have a 385lb bench that I didn't tell him about when he out weighed me by about 20 pounds). Post to comments...
No comments:
Post a Comment