When it comes to power, moving FAST and explosive, this type of circuit I’m about to share with you is a must for all trainees in my opinion.

Whether you’re training for a sport or simply hitting the iron to look ripped and shredded, training with EXPLOSIVENESS is the key!

I don’t care if you’re just trying to lose fat to look good on the beach.  You need to make sure and train FAST with explosive movements!

Enter – Power Circuits.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCTAiSlm6g8[/youtube]

These babies are good for a bunch of different reasons.

Here’s a few:

1)      Strength and Power – You train with big complex and explosive lifts which carry over to a lot of different things in both life and sport

2)      Fat Burn – The short “all out” work sets will create a nice metabolic effect that will help to lean you up

3)      Athleticism – You use full body explosive movements which will help you increase overall mobility and agility –  good for athletic carry over

The way I created power circuits was I wanted to figure up a way how I could use some heavier Olympic style lifts while combining 2 or more bodyweight or lightly weighted explosive movements. The goal isn’t to be totally fatigued from the circuit, rather be able to go “ALL OUT” for the whole circuit.

So these POWER CIRCUITS are designed to be short, around 30-50 secs max.   50 secs is actually pushing it.  When you’re training for max power, it’s never good to go into fatigue.  When you get fatigued, you lose power and therefore can’t train at max speed.   This will result in you actually building less power overtime.  NO GOOD if you’re trying to build explosive power for sports.  It’s still OK if you’re trying to melt fat though 😉

Now, how do you build your own POWER CIRCUITS??

You’ll choose from 3 movements.

1st Movement: A full body, weighted, explosive movement.  This could be many of your different Olympic lifts such as a power clean, snatch, clean and press, clean and jerk, high pulls, ect.  It could also be a heavily weighted sandbag clean, clean and press or shouldering.  And you could also choose from different kettlebell combos such as the clean and press, clean and jerk, or the snatch.  I would also consider your atlas stone loading or shouldering an option as well!

Each of those are all high power movements you can do with heavier weights.

The 2nd and 3rd movements can be either lightly weighted power movements or full body explosive / strength movements.

As few examples of lightly weighted explosive movements would be:

  • Med Ball Slams
  • Kettlebell Swings
  • Sledgehammer swings
  • Power Band Squat-Rows
  • Prowler Sprint
  • Sled Drag / Sprint
  • Battling Rope Slams

Some examples of your full body explosive / strength movements would be:

  • Burpees
  • Box Jumps
  • Explosive / Kipping Pull Ups
  • Plyo Push Ups
  • Ropes Climbs / Explosive Rows
  • Short Sprints
  • Short Agility Drills

Now after you have picked out a few movements, it’s time to put them together!

As you may have seen in the video, I started off with some power clean to jerk, then went straight into some burpees, and ended with some pull ups.  The key is to go heavy with your first movement and choose two complimentary movements to follow.  So it wouldn’t be wise to go with 3 movements that are all presses.  You want to work your whole body as best as you can.

The reps scheme I used was 4 with the clean and jerk, 6 with the burpees, and then 8 with the pull ups.  All relatively low reps so I could stay in my power zone.  You can mess around with even lower reps as well.

Here’s a few more examples of some power circuits:

1A) Heavy Sandbag Shouldering x 4 reps

1B) Plyo Push Ups x 6

1C) 20 yard prowler sprint x 1

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1A) Power Snatch x 4

1B) Med Ball Slams x 6

1C) Power Band Rows x 8

For your sprints and running movements, you would want to only go a distance that allows for about 6-7 secs max.

I hope you understand what we’re shooting for – max power and max effort every round!

What you’ll do is take a 3-4 min break between each power circuit then repeat it around 8-10 total times.

Give this a shot if you’re an athlete looking to gain some serious power and conditioning.  Also, if you’re someone looking to burn some fat, this would also serve as a powerful method in torching some unwanted tissue off your body!

Live Aggressive and Get Strong!

Travis