If you’re looking to increase your speed, endurance and strength, it’s time to try plyometric exercises! Also known as jump training, plyometric exercises can help you build muscle, burn fat and increase your athletic performance overall. They’re typically geared towards athletes in peak physical condition, but can also be used by people who simply want to improve their fitness. If this sounds like you, check out these powerful plyometric exercises for beginners, plus take a look at all the benefits of doing this type of workout!
What Are Plyometric Exercises?
Plyometric exercises are explosive movements that get your blood pumping and improve your power, speed and endurance. Skipping, jump squats, lunges, clap push-ups and bounding are all examples of plyometric exercises. These types of exercises should be done at the beginning of a workout before your muscles start to fatigue and your performance slows down.
Keep in mind that plyometric training is not recommended if you’re totally new to working out, or if you’re recovering from an injury. Plyometric exercises can cause stress to tendons, ligaments and lower extremity joints, particularly the knees and ankles. You should have the strength and fitness level required to do these exercises properly and safely. If you’re a plyometric beginner, slowly start increasing the duration, difficulty and intensity of the exercises as you get stronger and more comfortable with the workouts.
What Are the Benefits of Plyometric Exercises?
1. Weight Loss
Plyometric exercises are amazing if you’re looking to lose weight. They require you to expend quite a bit of energy, and target the entire body, so you can tone up and slim down at the same time. Plyometric exercises combine strength training with cardio, offering the best of both worlds – saving you time and also allowing you to get awesome fitness and weight loss results. Due to the intensity of the exercises, plyometric workouts burn a lot of calories, so if weight loss is your goal, this is the type of workout for you!
2. Improves Your Cardio and Endurance
If you’re looking to boost your cardio without having to run, plyometric exercises are just the workout for you! Since many of the exercises are jumping exercises, you’re working your cardio the entire time. Plyometric exercises also help improve your endurance. They train your body to produce more force while spending less energy to do so. This saved energy leads to increased longevity of quality performance, allowing you to get a better workout in.
3. Bone Strength
Not only do plyometric exercises strengthen your muscles, they also strengthen your bones. When you hit your thirties, your bones begin to lose their density, and plyometric exercises put a healthy amount of stress on your bones, helping them maintain their density. Regularly doing plyometric exercises can decrease your risk of osteoporosis.
5 Powerful Plyometric Exercises for Beginners
Beginner Home Cardio Workout (Plyos for Newbies) | Athlean-XX for Women
This is an ideal plyometric workout for beginners. It will help you work up to doing explosive plyometric moves with exercises such as jump rope, ice skaters, frog hops and marker jumps. You’ll need a skipping rope, but other than that, it’s a no-equipment workout that can be done from anywhere! Try one to two rounds if you’re a true beginner, or three to four if you’re more advanced!
Plyometric Exercises- 23 Plyo Variations | Redefining Strength
If you’re ready to really dig into plyometric exercises, this tutorial demonstrates 23 of the most popular plyo variations. You’ll be working your entire body, growing stronger and slimming down at the same time! Whether you want to improve your upper body strength, your lower body power, or your core, you’ll cover it all with these exercises. You’ll be using your own body weight, as well as a box step and a medicine ball!
4 Plyometric Exercises | Sierra
Plyometric exercises are one of the best ways to improve your cardio, and these four exercises will help you get in an awesome cardiovascular workout without having to go for a run! These are low-impact exercises you can do from almost anywhere. All you need is an exercise mat, and although she uses a bench for some of the exercises, you can also use a box step.
15 Minute Plyo HIIT Workout: Burn Fat Fast | Melissa Bender
15 minutes is all you need to get a killer plyometric workout in! You’ll be doing 15 different exercises, including bridge hoppers, froggers, lunge jumps, Russian kicks and jump rope. You’ll be doing 50 seconds of work with 10 seconds of rest in between. Pretty much all of the exercises use your own bodyweight, but you will need a jump rope for the skipping exercise.
10 Minute Plyometric HIIT Workout | No Equipment | Heather Robertson
This no equipment plyometric workout is perfect if you’re short on time, but still want to get an explosive workout in! With moves like lunge jumps, burpees, jump squats and speed skaters, you’ll improve your overall power, increasing your speed and strength and dropping calories.
If you’re ready to take your fitness to the next level, plyometric exercises are for you! Try these awesome beginner workouts and work up to more advanced ones to really improve your fitness!