Being big and strong is great.
But how to become more explosive is a question all athletes need to be more concerned with.
Being big, strong and explosive makes someone a bad motherfucker.
In most sports strength without speed is useless. Strong, slow athletes usually don’t make it to the top, unless we’re talking bout sumo wrestling. But even then, being explosive would give you a huge advantage.
There are countless ways to develop explosive power but I like to keep things simple so here’s the easiest way to do it.
Simply add jumps to your workout 1-2 days per week.
If you train full body these can be done any day. If you do upper/lower splits put them at the beginning of one of your lower body days immediately after your dynamic warm up.
To keep it simple do three sets of five on easy jumps and five sets of three on more difficult jump variations.
Rest about 45-90 seconds between sets (depending on the intensity of the jump, your bodyweight, etc.)
There are fancier jumps than those I’m going to list below but not all of them can be done in public or home gyms so I’ll keep it basic.
The #1 choice here would be box jumps; preferably on a nice padded plyo box.
That is the least stressful jump and the easiest to do and recover from because there is very minimal loading during the landing when compared to all other jumps; especially if you’re on cushioned plyo boxes. If you don’t have padded boxes, wooden or steel boxes will have to do. They will still be less stressful than landing most other jumps on the same surface you took off from or higher, in other words- the floor.
The #2 choice would be hurdle jumps. Set up a box, bench or hurdle and simply jump over it. You can do this straight ahead or you can do lateral hurdle jumps. The first level of hurdle jumps would have you simply jumping over the hurdle, sticking the landing, then turning around and jumping back over it. When you get good at that you can set up three to five hurdles in a row and jump over all of them in sequence with minimal ground contact time.
The #3 choice would be a standing long jump. But I have to warn you BE VERY CAUTIOUS when first starting out on long jumps/ broad jumps. These are by far the most stressful of the three and if you don’t ease into them or aren’t prepared you can definitely end up with some knee injuries, sore shins or even torn abdominal muscles (which I have seen happen, first hand).
I’ve actually witnessed not one but two different people popping abdominal muscles on this exercise because they weren’t physically prepared.
The more important message here is to never let yourself get so out of shape that you aren’t prepared to jump. The human body is made to run and jump so you should do so on a regular basis in order to maintain the athleticism of your youth.
Anyway, that’s the simplest way to become more explosive
Simply add three to fives sets of three to five jumps at the beginning of one workout each week.
This will fire up your central nervous system, improve your squat and your overall athletic prowess.
Give it a try and let me know how it goes.
