May 29, 2026
Hello!
Welcome to this week's Fitness Simplified Fridays.
Today, we're covering something most people neglect when combining strength & endurance training together: power training
We'll cover what it is, why it helps, & how to do it.
For a more in-depth coverage of this topic, check out the full-length article here.
The difference between power and strength training is the speed with which you move.
Strength training focuses on how much force you can produce.
Power training focuses on how quickly your muscles can reach maximum force production.
From a physics perspective, power is equal to work / time. If you minimize time in this equation, you maximize power.
For example, take a maximum effort vertical jump versus a maximum effort barbell back squat.
In the jump, you are moving less weight but your muscles are contracting much more rapidly in order for you to leave the ground.
In the back squat, you are producing much more force, but are likely moving much more slowly as a result of the weight. In other words, if you compare the first vs last rep of a hard set of squats, you probably stood up much more slowly in the last rep.
The most up-to-date systematic review w/ meta-analysis [1] showed that endurance training does not inherently interfere with strength training. It can of course without good long-term programming, but that's a different conversation.
One of the studies in this review, though, did show that there was less of an increase in vertical jump height in subjects who strength + endurance trained vs those who strength trained alone.
In other words, those who did only strength training improved their vertical jump height more than those who also endurance trained.
That said: nobody in this study actually trained the vertical jump, so it's hard to say how causative the endurance training was in this.
Nevertheless: I see it as enough rationale to include some sort of dedicated power training in your program.
It can help to make strength gains come easier over time, it can make you feel "springier" in running, and it is good to train for its own right as well.
One way you can think about this is the following:
True strength training will increase your ceiling of how much force a muscle can produce.
Power training will increase the speed at which you can get to that maximum force production.
In other words, it helps you make the most use out of the muscle you currently have.
Power training is not something you need to dedicate a ton of time toward in order to see benefits.
The simplest approach is to "microdose" them at the beginning of a workout.
That is, before a lower body or full body strength training session, perform ~1-2 sets of ~1-2 different exercises before getting into your true strength training.
There's a few categories of exercises you can use for training power.
First: plyometrics, which is where you impact with the ground and subsequently leave the ground (think jumping, sprinting, etc.).
Second: ballistic movements, which can include kettlebell swings, olympic lifting, or anything similar.
Third: you can take the same movements you are currently strength training and make them more specific to a 'power' stimulus.
For instance, let's say you can squat 225 pounds for 5 reps. For power specifically, you can perform this movement with 135 pounds for 2 reps, but stand up from the bottom as fast as humanly possible.
Training for maximum power production is fundamentally different than training for maximum strength.
The key is to make sure you are actually moving at a high speed. Thus, you want to avoid things in your training that would hinder your ability to move fast.
A few examples of what to avoid include:
Pushing sets to failure
Using too much weight
Performing too many reps
Doing power training late in a workout
All of these can induce fatigue; which will therefore reduce the top speed you are able to attain in a movement.
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