Power Training, Cumulative or Temporary?

[tipton]

One thing I've always been curious about is long term Power/Max R training. Are the effects of this cumulative like hypertrophy or more temporary like Power Endurance? I know that power drops off quickly if you aren't using it, but its not clear to me if every power phase you're "starting from scratch" or are the effects building off a previous season's training.

[MarkAnderson]

That's a great question, probably worthy of a stand-alone article.

Briefly, while power training benefits are short-lived, they ARE cumulative to some extent (and so are PE gains for that matter). You may have heard the term "muscle memory" used to describe motor-learning (such as memorizing complex movement sequences, or learning to throw a football with precision). However, the term is also used to describe our body's ability to "remember" previous levels of strength and fitness. This makes it much easier for an athlete to return to a previous level of strength, even after many years without training, than it was to achieve that level of strength originally. [As an aside, this is an interesting factor of the Performance Enhancing Drug debate--if PEDs have been used to achieve a superior max ability, even after sitting out a multi-year ban, an athlete may be said to benefit from prior PED use.]

Power, Strength and Power Endurance are not discrete points--they are ranges along a spectrum, and this "muscle memory" affect applies to all three.