This workout routine here is for the advanced although intermediates can utilize this routine sparingly in case they need to improve their athletic performance and conditioning.

A lot of people would like to start doing speed and power training like this as fast as possible but this is almost always a mistake.

People make the same mistake with heavy weights and advanced bodyweight skills as well. Nowadays people lack patience and that's why they never get strong. 

Before you can train fast, you need to train slow. Before you can lift heavy, you need to lift light. Before you can do an advanced skill, you need to master the basics.

This may sound obvious but what we actually mean is that even when you have the capability to always lift heavy, you should still lift light most of the time. Even when you can do many power moves, you should still work on the basics.

The reason for this is simple. 

The faster or the heavier the exercise, the more you will be utilizing your prime movers (big muscle groups) to perform the task.

As a result, unless you are already balanced and strong everywhere, advanced training will only make you worse in the long run because:

This is the story of a lot of people's lives. They want to feel strong immediately by lifting the heaviest weight or doing the hardest progression, instead of patiently building up the body.

Keep doing that and you will have an imbalanced body that is not good for the long term and eventually starts to break down. This happened to us.

How to Prepare the Body for Advanced Training

The purpose of light slow tempo training is to thoroughly strengthen the structure of the body. We call this the base or the foundation. 

This, by the way, will make you A LOT stronger quicker than advanced training ever will. This is because in the beginning this is the type of training your body actually needs.

Once you have developed a strong base like athletes have, you will be able to reap the full benefits of advanced training and do it safely without sacrificing any long term health.

This is simple and makes sense, doesn't it? Yet, many trainers do not understand this, instead everyone is jumping to the heavy lifts and difficult progressions without setting up the proper foundation. 

Before doing hard advanced training, do this first:

This is also what makes Athlete 20XX special and why it produces such great results for our users. There are 3 Phases for different fitness levels and the prior phases need to be completed before moving to the next one.

Phase 2 is for stability and balance and a lot of the time you are not even moving the body. Very few will be able to complete this phase and continue to the explosive Phase 3.

You heard it right. Before doing speed and power training in Phase 3, we are training stability in Phase 2 which is the opposite of speed training (yet they support each other). 

Stability training has given us more agility, speed and control than many other types of training because in order to be fast and agile, you need to have a good stable base for power production.

You see pro athletes doing this type of training all the time: they are working with different planks and balancing drills to develop their ability to stabilize.

Phase 1 on the other hand is all about control, strength and mobility which is perfect for beginners, even for the people who don't have any fitness background.

Athletic Workout Routine for Speed and Power

These explosive exercises are part of Phase 3 of Athlete 20XX. There are over 30 different exercises in each phase. Learning the proper form with the tutorial videos is vital.

A routine like this needs to be done only 1-2 times per week because it can be quite taxing for the recovery. 

Do this workout routine for 3 rounds or more. Take 30-45 seconds of rest between each round. No rest between the exercises!

Skater Jump

Skater jump is something you see a lot of athletes doing and for a good reason. 

Lateral movement is one of the keys to athleticism because in sports, martial arts and dance you are actually moving in 3D space.

If you only do 1-dimensional movements where you are just moving up-and-down, then you are massively limiting your physical development. 

The purpose of the skater jump is to primarily strengthen the lateral glutes which abduct the hip (spread the legs). You will be also working the quads, inner thighs, calves and core stability when you do it right.

There are many other exercises you need to do to fully develop your lateral movement but skater jump is definitely one of them. Before doing explosive lateral movements, first practice slow hip abduction movements as we do in Athlete 20XX.

Lunge Shuffle

Lunge shuffle is a great explosive exercise to develop the hip flexors, quadriceps, hamstrings and glutes. 

Lunge shuffle nicely embodies the principle regarding how explosive training should be done. Speed training should not be about resistance. It should not be about external factors like distance or height either.

Explosive training should be all about training the muscles and the central nervous system to fire as fast and as powerfully as possible. That's all it should be.

Hip Dip and Up

Hip dip and up is a movement that originates from wrestling because this is the movement you do when you defend a takedown. This is also widely used in MMA. The movement is called "the sprawl".

Surprisingly, the hip dip and up is a fantastic movement to develop the core musculature and hips. It's also a great movement for spine mobility (if you are advanced).

Power Push Up

Explosive training doesn't get more old school than this. Power push up is a great movement to develop explosive strength in the chest, shoulders and triceps. 

The big mistake people make is that they use mainly their spine and hip strength to explode themselves up. This way, you will jump a lot higher but you are poorly training the target muscles (the upper body). 

This is a good example of how an impressive movement is usually not more effective than a controlled less impressive movement.

To properly do the power push up, you need to keep the core as stable as possible (trains the core a lot!) and focus on the target muscles. This is what we call precision training.

We recommend to check out the article and video "How to Properly Train for Power". Very few people train for power correctly.

Stay strong.