Mackey’s Summer Workout Plan: Plyos
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Loading ...Plyos were on Thursday. I’ve been busy enjoying my sophomore summer and have taken the past few days off, relatively speaking.
Anyways, plyos. Thursday I did week 3 from Air Alert (starting at week three may have been a wee bit overambitious, but I wasn’t unable to finish any of the sets). I also did some plyo pushups for the upper body.
Right now, the plan is to give air alert a try, see how much I like it/it works for me, and potentially include it wholesale at a later date. So far, so good. The exercises are all really good (I haven’t done squat hops yet), I was particularly fond of the “leapups” where you jump from a quarter squat, as it really targets the knees and should be really good for strengthening and for preparing them for the shock absorption necessary to jump (and land).
I feel like Air Alert has a pretty solid emphasis on strengthening the calves/ankles as well as the knees, and less of an emphasis on strengthening the “traditional” jumping muscles, the quads. I like it a lot, and it makes great sense–balance is key; one’s quads are already plenty strong, but improving/augmenting the link between them and the ground will result in a corresponding increase in jumping power. Just the day after doing the plyos I felt like I had finally gotten back my jumping ability of old in practice. Might’ve just been the extra confidence from knowing that I’m working to improve my ups, but it felt great.
I suppose it would behoove me to write a bit about the why and what of plyos.
On the most basic level, plyos train the muscles you already have to work more powerfully. The explosive activity plyometrics use trains your neuromuscular pathways to be more efficient at being explosive, to recruit more muscle fibers faster, and in the appropriate order of muscle firings–that is, by doing focused, explosive jumping, your body learns how to use your jumping muscles better. I’m also pretty positive it has a positive effect towards developing fast-twitch fibers in your muscles, though that’s a bit more gradual.
I’m training plyos now in order to see improvement now, to some extent, but also with the hope that if I take a step forward now, maintenance during the season and points thereafter will be easier than improving it later (of course, improving later upon the improvments made now would be ideal).
I’ve mostly been cutting short on my GPP workouts, when I finally get around to doing one (Tuesday) I’ll do a post about it. I’m a big fan of GPP, it’s relatively easy to work on.
