Power Vs. Strength

I believe I saw someone say that there’s a difference between these two–in one of the prison articles.

What’s the difference?

[quote]mastermoore wrote:
I believe I saw someone say that there’s a difference between these two–in one of the prison articles.

What’s the difference?[/quote]

The general difference I’ve heard is this:

Strength is the ability to generate force.
Power is the ability to generate force QUICKLY.

Thus powerlifters train to lift quickly via dynamic-effort training. (I.e. lift a light-weight really fast.)

If anyone has a better definition, feel free to correct me.

nah you hit it on the head power is about moving weight quickly, and strength is moving heavy weight around , can you train for power while building strength? sure lift heavy AND fast, but i think it might be a bit hard to lift maximal loads fast

If you are doing things right, you will always need both. The Dynamic Effort day of westside barbell is primarily about increasing that speed for power. Louie Simmons and Dave Tate have both written articles to that effect, I believe.

Also, in the gym, power and strength are easily confused. Powerlifting is almost done with a totally lack of speed by amatuers. Yet Olympic lifting, uses power quite fully, but is not call powerlifting.

well power is stregth + speed my example would be if you had so much power and bare any speed it would be like a push

if you had so much speed and less strength it would be like a flick

The main problem, of course, is that people tend to use the two as meaning the same e.g. ‘he looks powerful’ means 'he looks strong, NOT ‘he looks as though he can move weight fast’

Technically Olympic lifters tend to be most powerful and powerlifters the strongest (as in maximum force exerted). Both, however, need to work both aspects.

Dax