Strength and Power Building

Got a muscle group or exercise lagging behind?
Click/tap to get my Mass Targeting
Specialization program FREE

Blast Through Bench Press Plateaus With Lockout Partial Presses

When strength gains stall, partial-range overload can help your body adapt to heavier weights than you can handle through a full range of motion.

One Dumbbell Overhead Heave

A practical explosive-power exercise that develops full-body force production without the technical demands of Olympic lifting. By driving a dumbbell from the floor to overhead in one powerful movement, you train the coordinated contribution of the legs, hips, trunk, upper back, and shoulders.

Seated Zercher Squat Lockouts

This exercise emphasizes the often-overlooked skill of maintaining posture under heavy load. The upper back, abdominals, and spinal stabilizers must work together to keep the torso locked in position.

Foot Hook Pull-Ups for Building Power Out of the Bottom of the Pull-up

Uses an overcoming isometric against a foot-hooked bar to explosively train pull-up power and motor-unit recruitment out of the bottom position.

"Diagonal" Dumbbell Hang Clean and Press

This is a full-body athletic power exercise that trains the posterior chain the way it actually functions in sports—producing force diagonally across the body rather than straight up and down.

Barbell Curl Squats

This looks like a squat, but it's really a brutal bracing exercise for the entire core. Holding the bar away from your body creates enormous demands on the abs, obliques, and spinal stabilizers to keep you upright throughout the movement.

Smith Machine Power One-Arm Rows

The fixed Smith bar lets you focus on aggressive power production and upper-back overload without worrying about balancing the weight.

Sandbag on Back Push-Ups 150 lbs

This solo sandbag-loading method lets you safely set up heavy weighted push-ups without needing a training partner.

Crotch Stuffer Deadlifts to Instantly Add 20 to 50 Pounds To Your Deadlift

This LOOKS insane but it WORKS. A simple bracing modification that produced a significant increase in deadlift performance without changes to bodyweight or training style. Improving intra-abdominal pressure and torso stability can have a surprisingly large impact on force transfer during heavy pulls.

Pin Presses for training power out of the bottom of the barbell bench press

A classic strength-building bench press variation that develops force production from a dead stop. By eliminating elastic rebound and momentum at the bottom of the lift, pin presses teach the chest, shoulders, and triceps to generate power directly from the weakest portion of the range of motion.

Press Into Pin Press Isometric Training for Bench Press Strength

A highly targeted bench press assistance method that uses overcoming isometrics to strengthen the weakest portion of the lift. By pressing maximally against an immovable object at the sticking point, you can improve force production, neural drive, and confidence at the exact joint angle where heavy presses often stall.

How to use leg drive in the barbell bench press

Leg drive is one of the most important bench press techniques for maximizing strength. When properly timed, force generated by the legs transfers through the hips, core, and upper back to help accelerate the bar off the chest and through the most difficult portion of the lift.

Chin-Up Negatives... how much extra weight should you use?

True weighted chin-up negatives overload strength by forcing you to fight the descent with maximal effort for 7–10 brutal seconds. Find out how to determine how much weight you should use.

Weight Increaser Squats for training power out of the hole

This is a neural-power training method designed to improve force production out of the bottom of the squat. By suddenly removing assistance at the weakest point of the movement, you're forcing the nervous system to rapidly recruit more motor units to overcome the increased load.