How to Get More Explosive

It irks me to see trainers/coaches on social media make a video saying “Athletes, here are 3 exercises you need to become more explosive”, containing some random, complicated exercises. There are no certain exercises or rep schemes to become more explosive. Explosiveness is a physiological ability. In order to improve physiological ability, we need a stimulus and adaptation. We need to progress the stimulus over time to make continued progress. This is how the body improves.

What is Explosiveness?

Explosiveness is the ability to produce high amounts of force in short periods of time. So if you want to become more explosive, you need to increase the amount of force you can produce, and increase the rate at which you can produce force. You need to stress your maximal force generating capacity and your rate of force generating capacity.

Maximal Force Capacity

The best methods to increase your maximal force generating capacity involve exercises that are highly loadable, progressable, and can be moved through a large range of motion. These are your basic compound movements. Squatting heavy, hinging heavy, lunging heavy, pressing heavy. A good guideline to ensure you are stressing your maximal force production capabilities is a slow bar speed. You should be attempting to move the bar fast, but due to the heavy resistance it is moving slow. To elicit an adaptation we need stress, the resistance should be difficult to move if you want to stress your maximal force production capabilities. 

Rate of Force Production Ability

The highest rate of force production the body is capable of is maximal velocity sprinting. The speed of contraction and velocity of movement in maximal effort sprinting is higher than any other exercise. Therefore, when it comes to rate of force development training, maximal velocity sprinting is king.

It is vital to execute sprint training properly. The goal is to reach the highest speeds your body is capable of. In order to do this, the sprints need to be done with MAXIMAL EFFORT in a state of complete readiness. You should not be fatigued. A good rule of thumb is to rest 1 minute for every 10 yards sprinted. For example, a 30 yard sprint requires 3 minutes of rest before the next rep is executed.

Another effective way to stress your rate of force production capabilities is maximal effort jumping. By maximal effort, I mean jumping for maximum height or distance. When jumping for a height/distance goal, the nervous system is forced to maximize the force produced in the time frame of the jump. Below are examples

So Just Lift Heavy, Sprint, and Jump?

If explosiveness is the ability to produce high force in short periods of time, increasing how much force we can produce (via maximal strength training) and how fast we can produce it (via maximal effort jumping), we become more explosive. Some will say this is all you need for explosive training. I don’t necessarily disagree, maximizing our explosive ability may require a few more methods.

The more adapted one is to explosive training, the stronger the stimulus needs to be to improve. We want to tell our nervous system to produce quick bursts of tension as often as possible to further adapt. This is where traditional “power” exercises come into play. These include things like weighted jumps, olympic lifts, and medicine ball throws. These methods do not reach the magnitude of force seen in maximal effort lifting, nor the rate of force seen in sprinting, but they further send a message to the body to produce high bursts of tension.

Keep It Simple

One thing that heavy lifting, maximal effort sprinting/jumping, weighted jumps, maximal effort throws, and olympic lifts all have in common is that they are PROGRESSABLE, and allow for HIGH OUTPUTS. If we want to make continual process, we need to progress the stimulus given to the body over time. With these methods, you can continually progress by adding weight, speed, height, and distance. They allow for high outputs because they are simple. The more complicated an exercise is, the less likely it is stressing your ability to produce high amounts of force in short periods of time, and the more likely you are just training an exercise. Don't fall for eyewash exercises on social media.