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Through Physical Training You Shall Become an Unstoppable Force

Exploring Strength, Power & Endurance Training Can Increase Your Dexterity to Unfathomable Levels!

Author

Bradley Abbott
April 03, 2025

In partnership with

Today?

  1. Introduction

  2. What is a Macrocycle?

  3. Plan For Strength

  4. Plan For Power

  5. Plan For Endurance

  6. Useful Links . . .

#Strength #Power #Endurance #Agility #Adaptability

One of my previous designs intended to help inspire . . .

Introduction

To gain Dexterity, strength, power and endurance can be trained each with it’s own value to you.

Strength, the muscles capacity to generate force, can be trained through weight training, weighted cardio, and by adding resistance bands to training sessions.

Power can be attained through weight training, sprinting, ballistics and plyometrics.

Endurance can be attained by training long distance cardio, and by adding ‘gears’ to your ‘gas tank’ through sprint sessions on any cardio machine or activity.

By training each of these components, you will learn many variations of sessions and plans, over time . . .

What is a Macrocycle?

This brings me to LEARNING WHAT A MACROCYCLE IS . . .

Basically, your LONG-TERM FITNESS PLAN that encompasses every detail of your

  1. Exercises

  2. Sets

  3. Reps

  4. Rests

  5. % of your one-rep max for each exercise

  6. Cardio equipment

  7. Food & nutrition

  8. Water consumption

  9. Musculo-skeletal and nervous system recovery

  10. And SLEEP!

All of these are such important things in your plan!

Figure out what body shape you want . . .

How much energy you want . . .

How you want to look . . .

And how you want to feel . . .

That last one is particularly important!

Picture the ‘You’ you want and then make a start by going to the gym once . . .

The other stuff above is important yes, but don’t stress yourself out over all of these details; just focus on one day at a time, and take notes of your session of how it made you feel, and what you would like to do differently next time.

Plan For Strength

Planning for strength is relatively easy. Grab a professional or friend, someone that will help support and record your one-rep max for each of the ‘Big Three’ lifts. It’s always important you have someone spot you on your one-rep max testing!

There’s no need to overcomplicate it. We always work Strength through the ‘Big Three,’ bench press, deadlift, and squat. The following exercises should compliment each one, like a incline bench press, pull ups/assisted pull ups and calf press.

The Sports Science literature states that when you’re training for strength you should be adding 2.5-5 lb’s per week, and you should be working each muscle group 2-4 times per week. this will ensure you’re getting the “reps” in.

If you’ve done three heavy sessions - bench, deadlift and squat - and you want to go ‘light’ that’s okay, because it means that you’re practicing technique, and technique is one of the four elements of strength training.

The four elements of strength training are . . .

  1. Size

  2. Architecture

  3. Technique

  4. Neural Drive (More on this in another article)

Plan For Power

Planning for power is also relatively easy, however, because you have to generate quite a bit of force quite quickly, it’s important that you ensure you possess a decent amount of strength first.

Training for power means you’re moving mass at a fast pace (i.e. mass x acceleration). This is why technique and strength are both important when training power.

This is where some people are misled by the many different messages on social media and television. The ‘Power Lifting’ sport is not exactly the same as ‘Training for Power.’

Yes, Power Lifters will train for power, no denying this, but serious power lifters train for ‘Maximum Strength’ with elements of power training mixed in. Or, they’ll train for maximum strength for so many months, and power separately for another few months.

Maximum strength is in the 1-3 rep range, whereas power is in the 3-6 rep range.

When you’re training for power the weight has to be light enough for you to lift quickly. It still has to challenge you, but if you lift too heavy a weight, then you won’t be able to perform this feat properly.

Training for power requires more of your body. You’re using more energy at a faster rate, which is why having a good aerobic capacity will actually help you, not hinder you.

I recommend training for power three times per week in the beginning, to allow your body to recover. The rest period for each exercise tends to be consistently longer across all of your exercises because of the amount of energy used.

 

Plan For Endurance

Planning for endurance is relatively easy. If you’re just starting out, I recommend training long distance three times per week and have 1 day rest in between each session, to allow your bones, tendons and joints to recover.

Train for long-distance cardio for 6-8 weeks to give your body time to adapt. Then start adding ‘gears’ to your ‘gas tank’ through short high intensity interval training (HIIT) sessions.

You can drop your long distance cardio down to 2 times per week and replace your third one with a HIIT session; or you could ‘beast it’ and have three long-distance session with an extra HIIT training session.

You will still be resting 3 days per week.

Depending on your training goals you eventually want to work your way up to three long distance cardio session and two HIIT sessions per week. This will create one mean cardio machine!

The good news is that your HIIT sessions can include weights and body weight exercises to ‘mix things up’ and keep it interesting. Your long-distance doesn’t necessarily have to be just running, or just cycling.

Keep yourself interested!!

Thanks for reading!!

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