Plyometrics Week 2

Today we are talking about plyometrics. If you have been following along you know this has been a theme for us and will be into next week as well. Our goal is to explore way to train our central nervous system to be fast and create an ability for us to be more powerful and faster without always needing to train with resistance. A lot of the same positive benefits we get from weight lifting we can get by simply moving fast or jumping with purpose. 

The straight leg box jump is our lower body movement this week. The goal here is to jump as high a you can each jump, this is why we focus on landing with straight legs. You can continue to build up the height of the box you are jumping to, but the point is to land with straight legs to emphasize the effort put out in each jump as you leave the floor. Traditional high box jumps help you develop a specific skill, but there are many people out there with high box jumps, but don’t have such a high vertical jump. This is the case for those who have a great ability to time the “tuck” of the knee’s into the chest and are flexible enough to get their heels really high. We want to focus more on the power into the floor, I literally want you to jump high!

The plyo push up is one of my favorite upper body movements of all time. I literally believe that when my bench press was the heaviest its ever been, 415lb., it was because of drills like this. Yes, lifting heavy weight helps us get strong, but to be fast and have power makes those loads travel around much easier. If you couple this movement wisely with other upper body weighted movements the gains will be prosperous. Focus on accelerating up as high as you can on each push up, and be sure for an of these movements to maximally recover between sets, each time!