Have you ever wondered what’s the difference between a good athlete and a great athlete?

The short answer is power!

When you have two fighters at the same skill level, the more powerful athlete will always have the advantage.

Today I'm sharing three of the best exercises to help you dominate with devastating knockout power. These exercises come from a special style of strength training designed to build ridiculous power in athletes – ballistic training.

So, what are ballistic exercises?

The focus of ballistic training is creating as much force as possible as quickly as possible without stopping as you're performing the exercise. When performing a ballistic exercise, there is a period when an athlete's body or another object is in flight.

For example, when performing a back squat, we may be able to produce a lot of force very quickly. But this is not a ballistic exercise because we stop at the top of the movement.

However, a jumping back squat would be considered ballistic movement because we are creating a lot of force very quickly, and we are entering a phase of flight. So, we’re producing force past the stopping point of the movement.

This is important for fighters because when we throw our strikes, we don't want them to stop when they hit our opponents. We're aiming to punch through our opponents or enter a flight phase. This allows fighters to knock out opponents. Hence, ballistic exercises are beneficial to creating devastating knockout power in fighters.

Now that you understand what ballistic exercises are and why they're important for combat athletes, we can talk about the three best ballistic exercises for devastating punching power:

#1 The Landmine Coil Jerk

In the world of strength and conditioning, there are no better ballistic exercises for creating power than Olympic movements.

Landmine exercises like the coil jerk are some of my favorite Olympic variations to use with combat athletes. They're easy to teach, they save a lot of time, and the risk of injury is much lower than a traditional Olympic movement like the clean and jerk.

To perform this exercise, stand in a split stance with one elbow high and the opposite elbow tucking into the front pocket of your leading leg. Make sure you have a big rotation in the upper body. Then, explode through your hips, extending your ankles, knees, and hips. This is where all the power is going to come from.

As you're exploding and extending, violently switch your feet as you drop underneath the bar and catch it overhead. Perform the landmine coil jerk for six to 10 sets of two repetitions on each side.

Remember, the key here is power. So, we want to keep the volume low and the rest a bit higher. This allows you to put 100% intent and force behind every rep. If you're fatigued going into the repetitions, then you won’t be able to max out your power production.

#2 The Med Ball Rotational Throw

I love using med balls for developing power in combat athletes because they're super simple to learn, perform, and progress.

For this exercise, you need to grab a med ball, stand in a split stance, and rotate the med ball to your hip. Next, drive through the hip to throw the med ball as far and as fast as possible. You do three to five sets of two to five reps on each side of the body.

Just like the coil jerk, it’s important to put 100% intent and force behind every rep. So, make sure you get plenty of rest in between sets.

#3 The B-Stance Trap Bar Jump

If you want to stop more fights with knockouts, then you need to incorporate this exercise into your training and conditioning routine. This simple exercise is one of the best when it comes to developing punching power.

While in a split stance, bend at the knee and hip, grabbing the trap bar. Maintain a 45-degree angle with your torso. Don't be too straight up or down. But you also don't want your back parallel to the ground.

Once you’ve positioned yourself correctly, jump as high as you can, extending at the ankle, knees, and hips. Remember to put full intent behind every rep. You can perform the B-stance trap bar jump for six to 10 sets of two to three reps on each side.

An important key to this exercise is not going too heavy. We want to use anywhere between 30 to 40% of our one rep max to ensure that we can generate the most power when performing this exercise.

Use these exercises in your training to build devastating punching power.