Emphasize weightlifting exercises to optimize strength and power. Through including weightlifting exercises into your training regimen, you can guarantee that you will not only become a stronger athlete all-around, but you will also become a more powerful athlete! Weightlifting exercises can be described as the snatch, clean & jerk, and variations of each. Weightlifting exercises have now become prominent in the strength and conditioning field to the point where strength coaches are now solely implementing these movements for their athletes in conjunction with accessory work to further increase performance in those lifts and promote structural balance.

As an athlete, one question that you may have for increasing your performance is, “what is the best way that I can increase my power?”. Well, lo and behold, there is a solution! I imagine that when you think power, you may also be thinking of explosive movements. As a result, you may have been instructed to engage in kettlebell exercises to emphasize this explosiveness, as it has been hypothesized that these movements can mimic the benefits of Olympic Weightlifting when it comes to power development as it encompasses similar movements at the hip, knee, and ankle.
Although kettlebells are certainly an effective means in establishing power improvements, it can be disputed whether or not it is more effective than weightlifting. In an study written in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, researchers compared the effectiveness of kettlebell training vs. Olympic Weightlifting training programs to increase strength and power. The weightlifting group engaged in exercises consisting of high pulls, power cleans, and deep back squats. Subjects engaging in the weightlifting program significantly increased 1RM back squat strength (+13.6%) greater than baseline and its kettlebell counterparts (+4.5%). Also, the weightlifting group significantly increased vertical jump than that of the baseline and kettlebell group. Although the weightlifting group gained significant improvements in relative strength and power, the kettlebell group was able to generate improvements as well, yet not as effective.

Thus, if you are an athlete looking to optimize your strength and power, here is yet another reason that you should implement Olympic Weightlifting movements in your regimen in conjunction with traditional heavy resistance training to elicit sky-rocketing results! If you have been a firm believer in kettlebells, they are still useful as an alternative means to increasing power or used in a progressive manner to build yourself up to weightlifting exercises.

References
Otto, W.H., Coburn, J.W., Brown, L.L., & Spiering, B.A. (2012) Effects of weightlifting vs. kettlebell training on vertical jump, strength, and body composition. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 26(5) 1199-1202.