In your opinion, what are the best exercises for developing explosive strength?
For what?
The 0-lifts are a good start if you can find a coach.
I’d also suggest box jumps, broad jumps, 30-40m sprints and weighted medicine ball throws.
Here are a few videos that might help you out.
What are the specific goals you are training for?
Box Jump
Power Clean
Sled Drags
Don’t forget squats and deadlifts are great exercises to improve explosiveness and strength, not to mention their many variations.
Jump squats, clapping pushups, and other explosive moves?
I really looking for explosive strength for two main goals
- Football
- Increase my vertical jump
Id mainly focus on getting stronger in the squat and deadlift mate.
However some basic jump training/sprinting may also help.
As XB said, if your proficient in the O lifts then use them, but the technique is hard to nail down without a good coach and a lot of time (during which you wont be making many gains).
If you are weak (relative to bodyweight), you cannot be fast (or hence explosive). All the advice here to get stronger is correct.
The big lifts are key, squats, deads and the O-lifts as well.
What are your current maxes in these key exercises?
Lift fast at low reps.(3-6)
The exercises depend on your goals.
Low box squats also
Get a 2.5xbodyweight squat, and your vertical will be pretty good.
Better vertical will come from practicing jumping, Plyometrics and just regular box jumps.
I would avoid the oly lifts if you don’t have a coach, I have never witnessed this done correctly at any gym even from other sports teams with mediocre coaching. Focusing on the squat is better use of time and you will get the hang of it quickly.
For football you just want to become strong everywhere so do a basic starting strength program. You also want some basic speed, so practice sprints. Also practice your position drills a lot, technique is very important for football.
Don’t lift heavy weights at the expense of jump training, though. There’s not a significant skill component to the vertical jump, but you probably should always have at least one day per week where you practice your jumping. Lots of powerlifters have 3x BW+ squats, but most of them don’t have impressive verticals (although I’m sure a few have very impressive verticals).
Also, Russian research demonstrated minimal correlation between squat strength and vertical jump height. I would advise you go to Kelly Bagget’s site and read the articles there. He really has a lot more information there on that type of thing than T-Nation does.
Go on some sights about basketball. Im sure they have training plans to jump higher.
Try a preparatory phase of squats and power cleans that will harden your joints and develop some power you’ll need for more specific stuff like plyometrics. Here’s a 12-week plan you can follow:
Weeks 1-4:
-MWFS - Smolov Jr on Squats
-TTh - 10x3 on Power Cleans (plus optional upper body)
Weeks 5-7:
-MTh - 10x10 on Squats
-TF - 8x3 on Power Cleans (plus optional upper body)
-WS - Low-Impact Plyometrics
Week 8: Rest
Week 9-11:
-MWF - High-Impact Plyometrics
-TTH - Optional Upper Body
Week 12: Rest
Then, you can repeat the cycle. Point here is, you need to be a proficient squatter and power cleaner if you want your joints to handle the stress of jump training.
Power Snatch
Jump Squat
Power clean
Plyometrics
Etc
Bill starr’s program for football.
Get proper coaching on the movements, esp the powerclean!
For plyometrics/shock trianing, wathc out the planning of these. It Is very easy to abuse these techniques. Start with low intensity stuff, work your way up over months and years to the high intensity stuff. Most importantly learn how to periodize plyometrics, or you will get nothing but injuries from that form of training.
imo, work on full squats, and do some clean or snatch pulls until you can find a coach for olympic lifts, or if not, speed deadlifts with a mix of heavy pulls as well.
Gotta be strong, but also moving weight FAST is a priority to. Step ups, lunges, box jumps and depth jumps are good. One thing you need on the field to that is sometimes overlooked is reactive explosiveness, ie moving one direction and then turning and exploding the other way, and this is where pulls or powerclean/snatch from the hang come in, as you train to react quickly.
IMO best bet, google/youtube how to do clean/snatch pulls especially from the hang, do some speed and heavy full squats and jumps. Just watch out as for the plyo stuff as you can burn out really quick. The Russian text has them only doing that a few times a year, but they really nail it at the best times and make it worthwhile.
If you don’t feel comfortable with the powerclean/powersnatch, don’t feel like you have to do them. Other people will tell you otherwise, but I don’t feel like they’re necessary to have a great vertical jump.
Power cleans
for explosive power i think the best exercise would be kneeling jump squats. i would also recommend this book Explosive Power and Jumping Ability for all Sports. The authors are Polish and former coaches who complied a lot of their info form people like Yuri Verkoshansky.
Agree with lots of the above, but if FOOTBALL, then check out Joe DeFranco’s website, he specialises in football and has some very strong guidlines which can form a decent template,