What is Plyometric training?

Think of plyometirc training as explosive training. It consists of many jump ups, jump downs, fast push ups, explosive push ups, and many more. It is a prime training method of building power.

Athletes tend to use this type of training a lot because of its ability to build great power. Power is your muscles ability to produce maximum force in the shortest amount of time. This type of training is not just for athletes... normal people can use it too.

It has the great ability for the "normal" person to create more energy. It also builds up the stabilizer muscles in the joints... making your weight training 100% more effective.

The Amazing Effect of Plyometric Training & Weight Training

Normally I would not have thought about combining these two types of training. It would seem that the intensity would be so great that over training could result. A study conducted by the Department of Physical Education at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, in Spain proves otherwise.

They took 37 male physical education students and divided them randomly into a training group and a control group. The training groups of students follows a training schedule that consisted of 6 weeks of weight lifting and plyometric exercises.

Since this test was use to measure an athletic act, they measured their maximal angular speed of the knee during instep kicks on a stationary ball. That is not the important measurement though. Just list to what happened to their other statistics...

Training resulted in a 4.3% gain in muscle hypertrophy, increase in size of type2a muscle fibers by 8.4%, increase in 1 rep maximum of their inclined leg press by 61.4% and their half squat by 45.1%, and in increase in their vertical jump.

In the control group, these variables remained unchanged. You would expect that because the control group did not do anything according to this study. I was hoping that they would have at least done just weight training or just plyometric training.

However, it was concluded that weight training and plyometric training showed significant improvement to not just the kicking speed, but many other physical capabilities.

This would be an ideal method for 4 week training. In order to get the most out of this type of training while not killing your body, you need to follow this schedule.

Alternating weeks do one week of 3 days of weight training and 2 days of plyometic training. The following week do 3 days of plyometric training followed by 2 days of weight training. You would need to keep the weight training routines balanced. I suggest you use super-sets with alternating muscle groups (random).

After these 4 weeks take an entire week off and measure your results from the first week you started. The ability of your body just skyrocketed and you not only feel great, but you look even more amazing.