How Collagen Might Boost Your Explosive Strength

August 11, 2025

It’s hard to claim that collagen is a “hot new supplement,” given that its health benefits were already being promoted by the twelfth-century Benedictine abbess Hildegard von Bingen. In its modern form, collagen supplements have been hyped for decades for purposes ranging from joint pain to hair thickness, despite a general lack of convincing evidence that they work. But interest has spiked over the past few years thanks to a burst of new research, and the latest study on the topic bolsters the claim that collagen might help build springier tendons and muscles to enhance explosive strength.

The latest study, published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, found that the elastic stiffness of both muscle and tendon increased in the collagen group, while staying unchanged in the placebo group. Perhaps more importantly, the collagen group also saw an increase in “rate of torque development,” which is a measure of explosive strength that quantifies how quickly you can apply force. The final piece of the picture is that, for individual subjects, those who saw the biggest increases in muscle stiffness tended to see the biggest increases in explosive force. Outside