Plyometrics Trainers Near Me

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FAQs:

What is Plyometrics?

Plyometrics is a type of exercise training that uses the speed and force of different movements to build muscle power. Plyometrics training can improve your physical performance and ability to do different activities. Plyometrics can include different types of exercises, like pushups, throwing, running, jumping, and kicking. Athletes often use plyometrics as part of their training, but anyone can do these workouts. People who are in physical rehab after an accident or injury use plyometrics to get back into good shape and physical function. If you’re in good shape and looking to ramp up your workout, you may enjoy the challenge of plyometrics. It's a great way to train if you’re into high-impact sports that involve a lot of running or jumping, like tennis, skiing, or basketball. When you're getting started, work with an experienced trainer who can show you how to safely jump and land. Start slow and low. Mix a few plyometric moves into your regular workout. Because plyometrics is a high-impact and intense exercise, check with your doctor first if you aren't active now or if you have any health problems. Plyometrics isn’t the workout for you if you don't like to sweat or are just looking to strengthen your core.

How Does Plyometrics Work?

Remember the fun you had as a kid, hopping, skipping, and jumping around the playground? The exercises you do with plyometrics mimic those dynamic moves. Plyometrics ("plyo," for short) used to be called "jump training." It's a technique you can use in many different ways. For instance, you can do plyometrics to help train for basketball, volleyball, tennis, or any other activity that uses explosive movements. You'll do a series of jumps and hops, like jump squats or one-leg hops. You might jump up and onto a box or bench, or jump over cones. Some moves will be faster than others. Every time you land from a jump, your muscles get stretched. That gives your next jump even more power. The combination of stretching and contracting your muscles whips them into shape. You won't do plyometrics every day, because your muscles will need a break from all that jumping. If you aren’t active now, you may need to start working on your basic fitness first and later have a pro show you how to do the moves, so you don't get injured. It’s a fun alternative to an everyday strength training workout that boosts your muscle power, strength, balance, and agility. You can either do a workout based on plyometrics or add some plyo moves to your usual routine without giving it an entire session.

What are Plyometric Exercises?

Plyometric exercises are powerful aerobic exercises used to increase your speed, endurance, and strength. They require you to exert your muscles to their maximum potential in short periods of time. Also known as jump training, plyometric exercises are usually geared toward highly trained athletes or people in peak physical condition. However, they can also be used by people wishing to improve their fitness. Plyometric exercises can cause stress to the tendons, ligaments, and lower-extremity joints, especially the knees and ankles. It’s important that you have the strength and fitness level necessary to do these exercises safely and effectively. If you’re adding plyometric exercises to your workout routine, work up to them gradually. Slowly increase the duration, difficulty, and intensity of the exercises.

What is Plyometric Training?

Plyometric training is a type of exercise that involves explosive movements, such as jumping, hopping, and bounding. These exercises are designed to help athletes develop explosive power, speed, and agility. Plyometric training typically involves jumping onto and off of boxes, hopping over cones, and performing exercises such as depth jumps and squat jumps. Plyometric training involves short, intense bursts of activity that target the fast-twitch muscle fibers. These fibers are responsible for generating explosive power, which is why plyometric training is so effective for improving athletic performance.

Is Plyometrics Cardio?

Yes! Plyometrics can be a form of cardio. When done at a high intensity, plyometric exercises can raise your heart rate and help you burn calories. However, if you’re looking to primarily improve your cardiovascular health, you may want to consider other forms of cardio such as running or biking. Plyometrics is a great form of exercise for overall fitness and conditioning, but it’s not necessarily the best choice if you’re looking to improve your heart health specifically.

How Many Calories Do Plyometric Exercise Burn in an Hour?

An hour of plyometric exercise can burn anywhere from 100 to 350 calories depending on the intensity, frequency, and duration. Generally, more calories are burned with higher intensities of work. Intensity also changes the number of calories burned per minute. The more explosive an exercise is, generally which higher intensity it has, the easier it makes it for you to maintain your current weight because this type of exercise burns more energy than regular aerobic exercises or activities that are performed at a low intensity.

How Often Should You Train Plyometrics?

Depending on what you are training for, it is recommended to do plyometric training 1-2 times per week in conjunction with a strength-based training program. Like most training programs, results would start to show after 4-8 weeks.

How Long Should You Train Plyometrics?

After a good warm-up and a series of specific firing and movement pattern drills for the appropriate muscles, a session would probably last around 30 minutes. Individually plyometrics drills would be short and sharp, lasting anything from 1-20 seconds with 1-2 minutes rest depending on your fitness level.

Is Too Much Plyometrics Bad?

Placing too much stress on your body and you will see limited training gains—and you may suffer an overuse injury, which occurs when you make your muscles and tendons work too hard for too long. Your body needs between 48 and 72 hours to recover after a plyo workout. This allows your muscles to repair themselves and become more powerful, and it reduces the risk of overuse injuries from too much impact. With this in mind, we recommend performing no more than three plyo workouts per week to make sure you don’t do too many reps and that you have sufficient recovery time between training sessions.

Is Plyometrics Bad for Your Joints?

Plyometric jumps help you build muscle and improve your cardiovascular health, as well as increase your strength, speed, endurance, and agility. But if you’re a beginner who chooses to learn the moves on your own, you can potentially injure your knees if you perform the exercises without taking the right precautions.

Why is Plyometrics so Tiring?

Plyometrics are very taxing on the muscles, connective tissue, and the heart and the fact that you do them repeatedly makes them even harder. This type of training may not appeal to people who prefer more moderate workouts. Give yourself a 1–2 minute rest interval between sets to recover adequately so that you perform them well. Plyometrics are designed to be performed at maximum intensity.

A Brief History of Plyometrics

Plyometrics comes from the Greek word “pleythyein” (to augment or increase). The practice of plyometrics as a training method originated in the former Soviet Union in the 1970’s, and was developed by Dr. Yuri Verkhoshansky, known as the “father of plyometrics”. However, the good doctor didn’t refer to it as such, instead calling it the ‘shock method’. During the 1970’s Soviet Bloc countries dominated the Olympics and other athletic competitions, thanks in large part to Dr. Verkhoshansky’s exercises. This grabbed the attention of an American track and field coach named Fred Wilt, who decided to investigate how the Soviets were training. After observing their methods, Wilt returned to the US, and in 1975 he coined the term ‘plyometrics’ and immediately began implementing the training method with his athletes. Since then, sports teams across the U.S. and the world have incorporated plyometrics into their training regimens to help their athletes become faster and more explosive.

General Plyometrics Tips for Beginners

If you’re new to plyometrics, here are some general plyometrics tips for beginners:

1. Limit plyometrics to one to two times per week. You want to leave yourself time to recover and be sure you’re not having any lingering soreness or pain.

2. Plyometrics should always be done at the beginning of a workout. “Because they’re the most explosive, fatiguing, draining exercises, you want to make sure that you’re fresh when you’re doing them. “That way you can get the most out of them and still reduce your likelihood of injury.

3. If possible, practice plyometrics in the mirror. This way, you’ll be able to check that you’re keeping your body in proper alignment. When you land from a jump, check to be sure that your knees stay over your toes, you don’t collapse your upper body and you land with your feet flat on the floor. Your landing should be quiet—if you make a loud thud when you hit the ground, you’re not absorbing the force properly.

4. Plyometrics can be combined with other movements. If you’re doing an upper-body plyometric workout, you can train your lower body that day. Just make sure it’s not on the same muscle group.

5. Combine plyometrics with strength training, not cardio. If you’re just going for a run or a bike ride, save your plyometrics training for a day when you’re doing other strength moves. “Plyometrics are anaerobic exercises like strength exercises are. Regular aerobic training should be separate.

6. Warm up first and foam roll after. A simple dynamic warm-up, like five minutes of light jogging followed by five minutes of high knees, butt kicks, skipping, or side shuffling, is enough before getting into plyometrics. After you finish your whole workout (not in between plyometrics and your strength session), foam rolling is recommended to prevent soreness.

The 3 Components of Plyometric Patterns

Plyometric exercises have three distinct components: an eccentric, an amortization, and a concentric phase that releases the explosive force. These three components make up a stretch-shortening cycle.

1. ECCENTRIC COMPONENT

During the eccentric component, the muscle is pre-stretched, storing potential energy in its elastic elements (2-7). The eccentric phase can be referred to as deceleration, absorption, loading, yielding, or the cocking phase (2-8).

2. AMORTIZATION COMPONENT

The amortization component is a time of dynamic stabilization during which the muscle transitions from overcoming the acceleration of gravity and loading the energy to releasing it. If this segment lasts too long, the potential elastic energy can be lost.

3. CONCENTRIC COMPONENT

Unloading the elastic energy occurs next in the concentric phase, which adds to the tension generated in a concentric muscle contraction. This is where the athlete releases the stored and redirected energy, jumping for the basket or slinging the ball to the first base.

Plyometric Exercises

Here are some plyo moves that you can try at home with just your body weight to create your own HIIT plyo workout!

- Pop Squat

- Split Squat Jump

- Reverse Lunge to Knee-Up Jump

- Tuck Jump

- Jump Squat With Heel Tap

- Skater Hop

- Burpee

- Box Jump

- Single-Leg Deadlift to Jump

- Lateral Lunge to Runner's Jump

- Hands-Release Push-Up

- Burpee Into Tuck Jump

Benefits of Plyometrics 

Plyometric exercises help train a person’s muscles to respond with power and efficiency. The potential benefits of this training process include:

1. increased power output in the muscles

2. increased force in muscle contractions with less energy consumption

3. faster speed of muscle contractions or speed in general

4. improved ability to change directions quickly, which fitness professionals may refer to as agility or nimbleness

5. overall better control when stopping and starting movements

6. increased jumping height

7. decreased risk of injury to the joints and muscles

A person should work with a trainer on an individualized training plan. Different exercises can help focus on the particular areas in which they want to improve.

What Happens During a Plyometric Exercise

This stretch reflex happens when you jump, one reason we often refer to plyometrics as jump training. For example, if you jump up onto a box and then jump down, the quads stretch as your knees bend and then quickly contract again with the next jump. It's the prestretch of the first jump that enhances the second jump. The stretch reflex (SSC) is an essential component of plyometrics.

While plyometric training is something athletes use for training, the average exerciser can reap the benefits as well in the form of more power, more strength, more endurance, and burning more calories. In fact, adding plyometric training to your workouts can also increase the afterburn—the calories you burn after the workout.

When you do tough, powerful plyometric exercises, your heart rate soars, sometimes taking you into the anaerobic zone. You only stay there for a short period of time, but it's long enough to burn mega-calories while building more power and strength in your body.

How to Programme Plyometric Training

1. Always make sure your body is warmed up before plyometric training. This helps to avoid injury

2. If you’re doing other types of training in the same session, do your plyo first - you want to make sure your form is correct, and it’s harder to do this when your body is already fatigued

3. Make sure you’re confident in the form of the exercise you’re doing before putting your all into the movement. Focus on getting your positioning right by starting slowly, in front of a mirror and then building up speed until you’re sure you have it nailed

4. Adjust your plyometric volume depending on your experience. If it’s your first time trying a plyometric exercise, see how many reps you can do before your form starts to break down. Each week, try to increase this 

5. Train different body parts throughout the circuit - if you prefer to do all of your plyometric exercises together in one workout (rather than spread out into your other workouts), plan your circuit so your muscles get to recover after an exercise

6. Don’t forget to cool down and/or foam roller after your session

Plyometric Precautions

While plyometric training is great for some people, it isn't for everyone, and, like anything in life, there are some downsides to this type of training.

Here are some things to consider:

1. Higher risk of injury - Anytime you jump, you risk an injury but this type of training, which often involve very deep squatting, lunging, and jumping can put a strain on your joints. Each time you land your joints sustain about seven times more force than your body weight.

2. Not for beginners - If you're just getting started or you haven't done this kind of training before, it's important to ease into it. A personal trainer or coach is a great resource for helping you set up a plyometric training program that fits your fitness level and goals.

3. It's really hard - Plyometrics are very taxing on the muscles, connective tissue, and the heart and the fact that you do them repeatedly makes them even harder. This type of training may not appeal to people who prefer more moderate workouts. Give yourself a 1–2 minute rest interval between sets to recover adequately so that you perform them well. Plyometrics are designed to be performed at maximum intensity.

4. It can lead to overtraining - Plyometrics isn't something you want to do every day unless you're a professional athlete. Trying some plyometrics in 2 or 3 workouts per week, with rest days after, is probably enough for the average exerciser. More than that and you risk burnout.

How to Find a Personal Trainer

To start, look at local gyms and fitness centers. They usually have their own trainers who work there. Trainers at gyms are often more affordable than trainers who work independently.  You can search online. Use local business review sites to find highly rated trainers in your area. Asking friends or family members is a great way to find a personal trainer you're likely to get along with. Find out if anyone you know has had a great experience with a coach in your area. You can also ask people who belong to your gym for recommendations or references for the personal trainers there.

Sources:

WebMD

HSS

SELF

Medical News Today

NASM

Healthline

Gridiron Elite Training

YarrMe

Nordic Balance

Stack

Noyes Knee Institute

Very Well Fit

Boxlife

Puregym

 

The content herein is provided for general informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Medical information changes constantly, and therefore the content on this website should not be assumed to be current, complete or exhaustive. Always seek the advice of your doctor before starting or changing treatment. If you think you may have a medical emergency, please call your doctor or 9-1-1 (in the United States) immediately.