Exercise 101: Plyometrics / Power Training

Once you’ve completed your warm-up, it is time to work on the quick and powerful movements of the routine. Not everyone is going to need to include these exercises, but if you are an athlete or just want to add in some variety and a great way to burn some extra calories, you may want to start adding in some plyometrics or power lifts. We want to get these activities in before the rest of our resistance training due to the high levels of stability and neuromuscular control needed to perform these exercises safely and effectively. If we were to hold them until the end, our muscles would be tired, and we would be much more likely to break form, compensate with the wrong muscles, or lose stability at our joints when we need it most. First, let’s discuss plyo’s.

Plyometrics are essentially quick movements designed to utilize the elasticity of the muscle to create faster, more powerful movement. The type of plyometric training you do will be determined by the type of activity you expect to be involved in. Take basketball, for example. Here we may want to work on squat jumps, lateral hops, and cutting actions to prepare us for the types of quick movements we would see in a game. With all plyometric work, you want to start out slow and work your way up in speed. So if we were to start working on squat jumps, we would spend the first few weeks working on jumping up and having a balanced landing, then taking a quick break before our next jump. The next level of intensity would be to jump, hold the landing for a second or two, then jump again. The last level of intensity would involve jumping continuously as fast as our muscles will allow. As anyone who plays basketball can attest, it’s not who can jump the highest, but who can jump the quickest that makes the difference. This is why the goal of plyometric routine will be to decrease the time between movements. This phase, called the amortization phase, is dictated by the delay during which the muscles must switch from slowing down movement to creating movement. By practicing landing and re-engaging a jumping movement, you muscles will learn to cut down on this transition time. Other plyometric workouts involve agility ladders, running drills, cone drills, and boxes. In all of these we work on initiating a movement, decelerating that movement, and then creating another. This is what sports are all about, so it is essential to include them in your routine if you are involved in athletics.

While plyometrics are usually reserved for training athletes, power training is often used for training both athletes and the everyday fitness enthusiast. Like plyometrics, power training is about speed. The difference, however, is that power training is about how quickly we can move resistance over a given distance, as opposed to how quickly can we repeat a movement. Examples of power exercises are Olympic lifts (cleans, presses, snatches), kettlebell swings, and medicine ball throws. In each of these movements, the goal is to produce the most force as quickly as possible in moving the resistance. Power training is important for all sports, including many recreational sports such as golf and tennis. The other great thing about power exercises is that they tend to use a lot of different muscle groups, meaning that they take a lot of effort and are great for burning up calories. Before you go out and start working on snatching though, I suggest you either find a trainer at your gym or at least watch some YouTube videos on the proper technique for each of these movements. Also, make sure that you have already been training for a while and have the proper stability to handle such activities. While having total body exercises is great, they also require clean movement, trained stabilizers, and a solid core.

Now that the quick and powerful moves are out of the way, we can now start to think about our resistance training. Next week I will go over what the sets, reps, tempo, and rest intervals are all about, what types of exercises you should be doing, and a strategy to make sure you are getting the most functional benefits from your workouts. Good luck and happy fitness!

Colin