Starting Strength

quickly.
    More terms now: Speed is the rate of change in the position of an object. If the direction of the speed is specified, we refer to the velocity of the object – the bar moving up at 2 meters per second. Acceleration is the rate of change of velocity over time – the increase in velocity (or decrease, known as deceleration ), or how fast the velocity is changing. Force is the influence that causes acceleration; for an object to accelerate, force must be applied to it. Strength is the physical ability to generate force against an external resistance. (It is difficult to define strength when it is applied isometrically, i.e., when the application of force causes no movement of an object outside the body, but rather stays within the physical system of the muscles and skeleton. Isometric force production is an important part of barbell training, but for purposes of defining strength, movement of the bar is our primary quantifying measurement.)
    Power in the weight room is therefore the ability to generate force rapidly. A more familiar term for this might be “quickness,” especially when applied to the movement of the body itself. For many sports, just being strong is not enough; you must also possess the ability to rapidly employ your strength so that you can accelerate better – both your own bodyweight and that of a physical opponent or a thrown implement. A strong man might very well be able to apply enough force to a very heavy weight to get it moving, but a powerful man can get it moving more quickly.
    The vertical jump is a valuable diagnostic test for power. It directly measures an athlete’s ability to generate force rapidly enough to accelerate his bodyweight off the ground, and it is a valuable assessment of genetic capacity. It is used by the NFL as part of their Combine test to predict this aspect of performance. Studies have shown that vertical jump performance is predictive of sports proficiency, that power clean performance is predictive of vertical jump performance, and that power clean performance is predictive of squat strength. Squat performance is predictive of squat jump performance, and squat jump performance is predictive of power clean performance. The power clean, by training the athlete’s ability to move a heavy weight quickly, is the glue that cements the strength training program to sports performance.
    One way to understand the concept of power in this specific situation is to compare performances in the power clean and the deadlift. As we have already seen, the deadlift is a straight pull off the floor, with the lifter standing up with the bar and the bar stopping at arms’ length, whereas the power clean continues the pull on up through an explosive phase to a catch on the shoulders. A power clean has a bar path that is twice as long as the deadlift’s, and it uses 50–75% of the load of a heavy deadlift. Since work is calculated by multiplying the amount of force used to overcome the weight of the bar by the vertical distance the bar travels, and since the bar is pulled perhaps six times faster in a power clean because it is half the weight of a deadlift, power outputs in a heavy clean might be five to seven times as high as in a deadlift. A deadlift can obviously be done with a heavier weight because it is a shorter movement with no inherent requirement to accelerate the bar – if you can just keep it moving up, however slowly, you can lock it out. Remember: there can be no slow power cleans because they will not rack on the shoulders, but a heavy deadlift might take 5–7 seconds to pull and it will still be a deadlift.
    Here is one of the most important facts about training for strength, or power, or sports, or anything else: it is always true that a man with a 500-pound deadlift will clean more than a man with a 200-pound deadlift. At its very core, power is dependent upon strength: force production capacity that does not exist cannot be displayed, quickly or otherwise. However, between two men who both deadlift 500 pounds, the one moving it faster is producing more acceleration – more force over a shorter timeframe – and thus more power. This capacity is the ultimate difference between a strong man and a strong athlete . The power clean is an incrementally increasable way to develop this power.

    Figure 6-3. The power clean contributes to the deadlift, and the deadlift contributes to the power clean. The power clean teaches timing and athletic synchronization