Why Power Training Belongs In Every Program

When was the last time you intentionally moved something fast?

Not slow and controlled. Not “good form, perfect tempo.” Actually fast. With intent.

If you’re like most professionals over the age of 40, your honest answer is somewhere between “a long time” and “never on purpose.”

That’s a problem. And the research just got even louder about why power training should be in your program.

Power Is The First Thing To Go

There’s a difference between strength and power.

Strength is how much you can lift. Power is how fast you can lift it.

After about age 30, both decline. But power declines roughly twice as fast as strength. That’s why the same 65 year old who can still leg press 200 pounds might struggle to catch himself when he stumbles on the curb. Strength wasn’t the problem. Speed was.

The ACSM 2026 Position Stand specifically called out power training as a key driver of physical function. Things like gait speed, balance, and stair climbing. The stuff that determines whether you stay independent and capable as you age, or you don’t.

What The Research Says About Power Training

Most of us assume power training means slamming heavy weights around. It doesn’t.

According to the ACSM Position Stand, power is best developed with:

Moderate loads (30 to 70 percent of one rep max)

Lower volume (24 reps or fewer per session)

Maximum intent on the lifting (concentric) phase. The bar moves fast on the way up.

That’s it. Lighter than your strength work. Less volume but with explosive intent.

Notice what isn’t on that list? Beating yourself up.

Power training isn’t about how tired you can get. It’s about how fast you can produce force when you’re fresh.

The Other Way To Train Power (That Nobody Talks About)

Here’s where it gets interesting.

You don’t actually have to lift light to train power. You can train power with heavy weights too. You just have to lift them with the intent to move them fast.

This idea isn’t new. Back in the 1980s, Dr. Fred Hatfield (the first man to squat over 1,000 pounds) coined the term Compensatory Acceleration Training, or CAT. The idea is simple. Lift heavy, but try to move the bar as fast as humanly possible on every single rep.

The bar might not actually move fast. Doesn’t matter. The intent to accelerate is what recruits the high-threshold fast-twitch fibers that produce power.

StrongFirst breaks this down beautifully in their article How to Increase Power with Grinds. The research they reference is hard to argue with.

A 2014 study by Gonzalez-Badillo and colleagues had lifters do bench press at either maximal velocity or half velocity using the same load. The max velocity group nearly doubled the strength and power gains of the slower group. Same weight. Same reps. The only difference was the intent to move fast.

A 1999 study by Jones and colleagues compared football players who trained with compensatory acceleration to those who didn’t. The CAT group saw an 8.6 percent increase in upper body strength and a 9.4 percent increase in power.

The control group? 3.8 percent and 2.8 percent. Roughly triple the power gains from simply trying to move the bar fast (with good form).

And a 1992 study by Adams and colleagues found that combining heavy squats with explosive plyometric work produced bigger jumps in power than either method alone.

The takeaway: you’ve got two tools for training power, and you should be using both.

Light and explosive (ballistics like swings, snatches, throws, and jumps).

Heavy and intent-driven (your big lifts, moved with maximum acceleration even when the weight is grinding).

Use them together and you get a complete power-training stimulus. Use only one and you’re leaving gains on the table.

The Recovery Argument You Need To Hear

Here’s the part most coaches miss.

Power training, done correctly, is one of the lowest-stress, highest-return things you can put in your program over 40. Lower volume. Moderate loads. You stop sets well before failure. The nervous system gets the stimulus it needs without the body absorbing a beating.

The same goes for grinds with intent. You’re not chasing the pump. You’re not training to failure. You’re picking a weight you can move with conviction and stopping when bar speed drops.

This pairs perfectly with the recovery-first mindset your training should be built around. Your goal isn’t to do as much as possible. It’s to do the minimum effective dose of high-quality work that produces the result you need.

How To Incorporate Power Training

You don’t need to add Olympic barbell lifts to train for power.

Here’s a simple way to add power training to your program:

Kettlebell swings. 10 to 20 sets of 5 reps performed on the minute. Maximally explosive on every rep.

Medicine ball throws or slams. 8 to 12 sets of 3 to 5 reps.

Push press or jump squats with a manageable load. 5 to 10 sets of 3 to 5 fast reps.

One of our favorite applications uses the Alactic + Aerobic (A+A) approach alternating kettlebell swings and push-ups every round in an On The Minute format. This can be performed for 20 to 40 rounds when keeping the work interval below 10 seconds so that power remains explosive while allowing sufficient time for recovery.

Then bring CAT into your strength work. When you squat, deadlift, or press, pick a weight in the 50 to 80 percent range and try to move it as fast as you possibly can on the way up. Stop the set when the bar slows down. You’re not chasing reps. You’re chasing speed.

Add the ballistic work to one or two sessions per week, before your strength work. The CAT mindset goes into every strength session you do. The total extra time investment is maybe 10 minutes.

But that 10 minutes might be the difference between you crushing your 70th birthday and you watching it from a recliner.

Train power. Stay capable.

Ready To Train Smarter?

If you’re tired of guessing what to do in the gym and want a program built around the principles in this post (power, strength, and recovery-first programming designed for busy professionals over 40), our Small Group Personal Training program at No Limits Fitness is built for exactly that.

Come see what it’s like to train with intent.