Do Plyometric Exercises
Plyometric exercises train your muscular system, decreasing the time it takes to go from rest to maximum force. This can greatly increase your performance in activities which are heavily dependent upon speed, such as jumps, punches, swings, or sprints.
Contents
Steps
Prepare for the Exercise
- Exercise-With-Weights a substantial level of strength in the movements to be trained. This preconditioning helps prevent injury due to the intense forces of plyometrics, as well as providing benefits of it's own.
- A couple months of traditional strength training should be plenty.
- Warm-up-for-Weight-Lifting-Exercises. Exercising "cold" muscles increases the chance of injury.
Perform the Exercise
- Make sure the muscles used in the movement are not tired.
- Do not add any weights to your body. This would be dangerous and counterproductive.
- Quickly, move eccentrically (against the force of the muscle) to one endpoint of the movement; for example, to train plyometric squats, fall into the low position.
- Explosively, return to your previous position; in the case of squats, this would mean jumping upwards.
- Repeat steps 3-4 as many as two more times. (depending upon how tiring the movement is)
- Rest for a few (3) minutes.
- Repeat steps 2-6 two to four mores times. (depending upon how tiring the movement is)
- Repeat the entire routine up to three times per week.
Tips
- Obviously, specific goals (punching vs. jumping) require specific movements. Make sure your plyometric exercises are the right ones for your goal.
- There is not a great deal of evidence that the eccentric phase of the plyometric exercise is beneficial, so you may exclude it without greatly reducing the quality of the training. Note that this technically means that the exercise is not "plyometric".
- Often, the eccentric preload is done by jumping down from a (small) height.
- If you cannot find a body-weight exercise that trains the muscles you need, or the exercise is too hard for you to do quickly, you may instead train the movement by throwing a weighted object. This is technically a ballistic exercise, but the end result is the same.
Warnings
- Be careful when throwing heavy objects around.
- Do not perform plyometric exercises with heavy weights. You are likely to hurt yourself.
