How many times a week should you do Power Training

Power Training can yield high benefits for athletes that want to jump higher, run faster, hit harder or change direction quicker.

But ‘How many times a week should you do Power Training?’

This article and video discusses

• How many times a week should you do or can you do Power Training
• How to fit the Power Training into your overall training plan
• A practical application how to structure a Power Training week

In previous article I discussed

• the difference between Strength Training vs Power Training
• how to chose the right Power Training method

So, the next question that stands out is the right Power Training frequency.

How many times a week should you do power training?

In order to determine the right Power Training frequency, the first step is to evaluate how long it takes to recover from Power Training.

Power Training has a high impact on the nervous system and the nervous system usually takes 48 to 72 hours to recover from such a stimulus.

This number of 48 – 72 hours is not written in stone, as there are many variables influencing the recovery time, such as training intensity, training volume, training status, just to name a few.

However, 48 – 72 hours serves as a good guideline, which means you can do Power Training 2 – 3 times a week.

How to fit the Power Training into your overall training plan

After you decided to prioritize Power Training and determined the Power Training frequency, the next step is to align the other training sessions with your Power Training workouts.

What does that mean?

If you want to become more powerful, you should not only look at the ideal Power Training frequency but also look at aligning your Power Training with trainings, that complement your efforts in becoming more powerful.

What are those kind of trainings?

There are exceptions to the rule, but generally speaking, Power Training complements well with Maximum Strength Training, as well as Speed Training.

How could this look in practice?

How many times a week should you do power training? A practical application

Due to the high neural demand, the training frequency should be 2 – 3 Power Training workouts a week.

Consequently, there are different options to structure the Power Training and complement the Power Training with the Maximum Strength Training (and/or Speed Training).

Option 1, you could do 2 or 3 ‘standalone’ Power Trainings a week.

Option 2:, you can do 1 Maximum Strength Training and 1 – 2 Power Trainings a week.

Option 3, you can do 1 Maximum Strength Training, 1 Power Training and 1 Speed Training a week.

Examples we use in our daily practice look like this:

This variation is adapted from Prof. Dr. Schmidtbleicher who carried out research on different Power Training methods and found a combination of these three trainings deliver the best results.

Check out the different Power Training Efforts, as I have outlined them in the article How to do Power Training

Concluding How many times a week should you do Power Training

Power training has a high impact on the nervous system.

The nervous system usually takes 48-72 hours to recover, which means that allows 2-3 Power Training workouts a week with 1-2 days to recover in between.

When you plan your Power Training workouts and your training week, also look at complementary training to combine with your Power Training.

These training could be maximum strength training and speed training, which allows you to get the best out of all worlds.