Learn the proper way to develop power. The impressive stunts you see on social media are not the best way to develop power!

f you are on different social media outlets, you have probably seen many people performing amazing feats of strength and stunts to get views and impress the viewers.

Social media view count thrives on extreme physiques and extreme stunts. These are all good for inspiration and entertainment, but they unfortunately give the wrong impression of the reality. 

What you often see on social media is content that has been specifically created to attract views and gain impressions. How people train behind the closed doors is completely different and doesn't always match their actual content.

Moreover, you can also only see the final product - not the years that took to get to that level. Just because someone does very advanced training right now, that doesn't mean that is how you reach that level. 

There are steps to the top and if you try to skip steps, you will just hurt yourself and hinder your progress. The right way is to ascend step by step by integrating fitness into your lifestyle.

One of the problems of social media's brainwashing is that people have started to chase nothing but records and skills. This has distorted people's concept of proper strength training and what actually consists of proper training. 

When you are prioritizing skill development (which is NOT proper strength training), you are always rushing to the next progression and the hardest possible exercise. You try to lift the most amount of weight possible in every workout session. 

This is not sustainable for progress and it's also the recipe for injuries in the long run. The purpose of proper strength training is to strengthen your body, not break it.

How the top guys actually train (if they are smart), and how everyone should train, is vastly different from trying to lift the heaviest you can or doing the hardest exercise imaginable. 

To actually build the body and develop the ability to perform high level feats and strength, you have to do exercises that aren't as sexy and impressive from the outside. 

These fundamentals never grow old and never go out of style. All of the greats from Michael Jordan to Muhammed Ali were known for their mastery of the basics.

For example, in the last hip flexor video the exercise seems simple but the effects are the best you can get. THIS IS EXACTLY how you build strength and performance. We are dropping real secrets left and right (leaving the best for our programs though).

The people who don't focus on the fundamentals will keep hitting plateaus in their training and continue wasting their time. Most of the ego lifters also have their elbows, shoulders, knees and everything else hurt.

The same goes for power training and how it is developed. How you develop power doesn't happen by doing the most amazing feats of strength like flying through the air like a superman. 

One of the common ways to get views on social media is to perform extremely explosive push ups which we call "show off push ups" where you do arbitrary claps or otherwise jump through the air.

The purpose of these push ups is to show off, not to develop power. Let's take a closer look at the show off push up and the proper way to develop power with the push ups.

The principle you will learn below applies to all exercises. These push ups are only great examples.

In the show off push up you explosively jump off the floor with your entire body. You have probably seen different variations of this exercise: behind the back clapping push ups, double and triple clapping push ups and so on.

The problem with the show off push up is that the majority of the force will come from your hips and spine.

You initiate the movement with your hips and spine and only do the finishing touch with your chest, shoulders and triceps. 

The real problem with the show off push up is that it's not that good for developing power in the upper body pressing muscles because most of the force comes from the hips. 

Show off push up is not that good for developing power in the hips either because there are better alternatives available. You are basically learning how to wiggle like a fish which as a movement doesn't transfer that well to any sport or martial art either.

When it comes to the safety and risk of this exercise, it's not worth doing regularly.

In the proper power push up you eliminate the hips and spine movement through stabilization and solely focus on the upper body.

This way, 100% of the force production is generated by the chest, shoulders and triceps. This power push up is efficient, effective and safe as long as the basics have been mastered. 

Stabilization of the hips and core is a crucial high level attribute which is heavily trained in this exercise because it's hard to keep the core tight when you are performing the explosive movement.

This stabilization + focus principle we utilize in the power push up is what we call "precision training". The purpose of this training technique is to emphasize one area by stabilizing the rest of the body. 

Although it may seem like it is isolation training, it's far from it. Stabilization on the surface doesn't look much but it is serious strength work and will lead to astonishing results in strength and muscular development.

In precision training you are making sure all of the movement comes from the emphasized area and the rest of the body stays still without interfering in the force output.

In the power push up we are emphasizing the chest, shoulders and triceps and learning how to explosively contract them turning the muscles into explosive fast twitch muscle fibres. 

When you specifically target and develop the muscle quality this way, the benefits of this exercise will directly transfer to almost anything you do whether it's punching, throwing or batting. 

That's how you train for power. You emphasize certain muscles and add power and speed qualities to these targeted muscles.

There are very few specific exercises that translate into universal performance and that's why we are not doing sports specific training here. Instead, we focus solely on the core elements of athleticism. 

For example, when you do the power push up properly with the precision training, your chest, tricep and shoulder muscles are learning to contract fast and explosively. 

The push up as a skill movement doesn't transfer well to anything but the added power quality of your muscles will transfer to everything. 

What most people do is that they are not really emphasizing or developing any muscles or their qualities. They are 100% focused on skill training. Skill training only transfers well to anything if it's specific to the sport/art.

Street workout, powerlifting, Olympic weightlifting, gymnastic skills and a lot more are skill training unless you utilize the precision principle. These are garbage for building universal performance.

One arm chin up, planche, heavy back squat or heavy deadlifts are strength skills with bad transference to anything. 

Precision training is a smart mindful approach where you maximize the development of an area, one by one. This means you need to do a set of different exercises to turn the entire body into power. This power push up is just one exercise among dozens.

If you are looking for a new method of developing all the core elements of human movement to the fullest potential like never done before, check out Athlete 20XX.

It's our state of the art program that targets all major joint articulations and develops all athletic qualities of the muscles. Before we started doing precision training, we were wasting our time.

Train hard, stay safe.