We are a community built on fitness. Our mission is to create a community built on a shared commitment to improving one’s overall health, fitness, and the amount of work that can be done with the body. Accountability and integrity are just a few of the standards every member commits to when they join our family. We hold our members and ourselves to these standards and demand the use of the brain as well as muscles to learn, challenge ourselves, and do things we never thought possible.
In our training sessions, we perform a strength cycle during the same session as our conditioning. Because we are athletes blurring the lines between strength and conditioning, we don’t program separate strength days into our curriculum, but rather we design them within each day’s training program. This makes every day a strength day and every day a conditioning day. Every day requires coordination, accuracy, and balance. Every day requires flexibility agility, speed, and stamina. And most importantly, this makes every day require power.
The terms “strength” and “power” are sometimes used interchangeably in the gym, but there is a difference. In basic terms, strength is the ability to move large amounts of weight. And power is the ability to move that weight FAST. Power can be seen as the explosive force exerted—producing the greatest amount of force in the shortest possible time.
How much power are you producing with a specific lift? How much power are you producing in any given workout? This depends on your current work capacity.
The fundamental measurement we use to track improvements in performance is power output. Power itself is a measurement of work capacity. We train to increase work capacity across broad time and modal domains. We are constantly conditioning ourselves to handle more work.
Consider a benchmark workout like Fran: 21, 15, and 9 reps for time of thrusters and pull-ups. Let’s say your fastest Fran time is 3:57. Not bad, but it’s been a while since you completed this workout and you’re feeling stronger and want to see if you can beat your time. So you come in the gym ready to go and knock out Fran in 3:45. Congratulations! By shaving off those 12 seconds, your power output has gone up, as has your performance. This gives you a simple metric to measure your power output and gauge your progress.
Improved performance is our ultimate goal, and power goes hand in hand with performance. Every day is a day in which we strive to maximize our power output. By incorporating strength and power training into our daily workouts, we can maximize our performance and the benefits of our training.