Phase 3 begins now! Phase 3 has always been my favorite part of our annual cycle—it’s our Power Phase. That doesn’t mean we’re abandoning our other attributes like Strength or Endurance; it just means the program will be biased towards developing our power capacity.

What is Power? Well, Foucault wrote plenty on the technologies of power but somehow left the concept opaque and, perhaps, somewhat enigmatic. Clausewitz was a little more concrete, defining power as the capacity to compel an opponent. Power wasn’t an end in itself (as it arguably was for Foucault and philosophers like Nietzsche); for Clausewitz, it was a means to achieve a particular policy goal.

What is Power for us when it comes to programming? Well, we probably lean a little more on modern physicists than political philosophy. Yes, they are possibly one and the same—if truth and power are irrevocably intertwined and entangled—but we aren’t going to engage in a genealogy of the concept today. Instead, we’re going to look at the most widely used definition: power is the rate at which work is done.

Putting it in a fun formula, we get: Power = Work/Time. Time as a concept can get a little intense, but we tend to just operationally define it based on measuring the vibrations of the caesium-133 atom. Rather than getting too deep into theoretical physics, we can just leave it to that, and use these good vibrations to help us count seconds, minutes, hours, etc. 

Work can also get a little intense. Early economists, like Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and, yes, Karl Marx, spent much time on the concept of work—or, specifically, labor. These early economists believed that the true value of something was determined by the totality of the labor needed to create it. Latter-day economists swept this definition under the rug in favor of the utility theory of value. Critics had pointed out that just because a lot of labor went into something, there might not be a demand for it. Just because you dug a hole and filled it up again doesn’t mean you created value. Someone else must see value in it because it maximizes their happiness or utility. Without someone else valuing what you produce with your labor, the goods from your labor have no market and no value.

Well, that might have been slightly off-topic, but coming back to the concept of work and labor, we can say that we actually don’t care about finding a market for the fruits of your labor. The value, we believe, is intrinsic to the work itself. So, perhaps we are more akin to the early economists who embraced the labor theory of value and worried that the power imbalances between those with capital and those without would lead to exploitation of the labor class. It's hard to say, given our trouble defining power...

BUT, getting back to the topic at hand: whether the work truly has value without a market doesn’t actually define work. So, to keep things simple, let’s just define work as the modern physicists do: Work is energy transferred to or from an object via the application of force along a displacement. Putting it in a formula we get: Work = Force x displacement.

BUT, getting back to the topic at hand. Whether the work truly has value without a market, does not actually define work.  So, to keep things simple, let’s just define work as the modern physicists do: Work is energy transferred to or from an object via the application of force along a displacement. Putting it in a formula we get: Work = Force x displacement.  

OK, OK, I think we’re getting somewhere. I think we can agree on what displacement is (straight-line distance from an object’s starting point to end point), and we have great ways to measure it (meters). But what is Force? Is Force just Clausewitz's definition of power? Maybe... But force, as defined by physicists, is fundamentally just the push or pull on an object. And we can define Force with the following formula: Force = mass x acceleration. Wait, what is this acceleration thing now? Please tell me that one is simple... Acceleration is the rate at which an object changes its velocity. And velocity? Velocity is the rate at which an object changes its position.

I think that makes sense.  

Putting it all together: 

• Power = Work/Time

• Power = (Force x displacement)/Time

• Power = ((mass x acceleration) x displacement)/Time

• Power = (((mass x (𝚫velocity/𝚫time)) x displacement)/Time 

• Power = (((mass x ((𝚫displacement/𝚫time)/𝚫time)) x displacement)/Time

Long story short, if we want to maximize our Power, we need to improve our ability to do work quickly or displace the mass of an object quickly. We can do this by either 1) increasing the displacement, 2) increasing the mass we are moving, OR 3) decreasing time. Since these are all measurable, we can easily track the exercises we do and see which ones maximize our power.

Plenty of exercise scientists have done this through the years; in summary, they’ve found that the snatch, clean, and jerk have the highest power outputs of any exercises. Additionally, sprinting, jumping, throwing, and other explosive movements that generate force very quickly also score very high on power.

BUT does an exercise that produces a lot of power help train you to be more powerful? Short answer: yes. According to the SAID principle (Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands), researchers have generally found that our bodies respond and adapt to what we do to get better at doing exactly that. So, that’s what we’re going to do.

For the next 12 weeks, we’re going to lean into and cultivate our power. We’re going to train to do more work in a shorter amount of time—which may or may not lead to greater "value" being created, but I bet it’ll feel good!

Weekly Template:

Week A:

• Monday:

  • Primary - Snatch

  • Secondary - Back Squat

• Tuesday:

  • Primary - Split Jerk

  • Secondary - Ring Muscle Ups

• Wednesday:

  • Primary - Clean

  • Secondary - Deadlift

• Thursday:

  • Primary - Jumping

  • Secondary - Pistols

• Friday:

  • Primary - Snatch

  • Secondary - Front Squat

• Saturday:

  • Primary - Clean & Jerk

  • Secondary - Sprinting

Week B:

• Monday:

  • Primary - Clean

  • Secondary - Deadlift

• Tuesday:

  • Primary - Jumping

  • Secondary - Pistols

• Wednesday:

  • Primary - Snatch

  • Secondary - Front Squat

• Thursday:

  • Primary - Clean & Jerk

  • Secondary - Sprinting

• Friday:

  • Primary - Snatch

  • Secondary - Back Squat

• Saturday:

  • Primary - Split Jerk

  • Secondary - Ring Muscle Ups