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Ask The Experts

How can I increase my explosive power?

Stuart Davies:How can I increase my explosive power?

Terry O'Neill: There are two ways to approach this, on or off the rowing machine. The strategy is to build up your basic strength especially in the legs. Off the machine, something like the DYNO is the best and safest way to achieve this, or alternatively use separate leg press, bench pull and bench press machines. Start by finding out what is the maximum weight you can handle. Three times a week over 4-6 weeks just concentrate on trying to improve this maximum by working in the range of 95-100% of your maximum, doing 4 sets of 3 repetitions. Over the subsequent 4-6 weeks reduce the weight to 85-95% of your new maximum and increase the speed at which you lift the weights and the number of sets to 6 and the reps to 8. The final phase is to drop the weight to around 75% of maximum and increase the repetitions to 20 and leave the sets at 6 but working as fast as you can.

In addition you will need to work on core stability with sit ups, crunches and dorsal raises.

On the rowing machine it is covered pretty well in the training guide, which you can download for free from the Training Programme section of our web-site. If you can't get access to this, we can send you a hard copy for a tenner.

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