Tim,

I remember somewhere you said that for general conditioning you do mostly calisthenics/bodyweight exercises and isometrics (sorry if I am mis-paraphrasing you, but I'm pretty sure I saw something to that effect on multiple threads). I personally have found that these really work for me. I have never had much trouble with strength or explosiveness--that is until after I gas out! I have found that for me a "magic combination" for general conditioning is calisthenics followed by isometric holds to failure. Gives me plenty of strength and muscle endurance to spare. I of cource also do additional cardiovascular training.

My question is--do you use plyometrics much? The theory behind them seems sound, but I have tried incorporating them and haven't seen much benefit. I think I am one of those naturally fast twitch types--like I said, strength and explosivness are rarely a problem in sparring for me even though I'm not big--but I gas out easy and need to keep my endurance up. And as you know, noone is strong or explosive when they are gassed.

I replaced my calisthenics routine with comparable plyos for a while and found about the same benefit in strength and explosiveness, but less benefit in endurance.

May be a body type thing, but I'd like your take on it.

Thanks

Hi Jim,

I don't do a lot of plyometrics, I do practice some explosive jumps in my anaerobic cardio intervals, but that is about the extent of it.

Tim, is there a book about bodyweight exercises you would suggest? thanks a lot

naked warrior- pavel tsatsouline

Thanks for the reply, Tim .

Hi Andrea,

I agree with Jason that the Naked Warrior is very good.

I made my students do 7 explosive jumps from a full squat, the other day. They all had wobbly legs after we were done, and several of them said they were sore the next day. My students regularly do squats and other leg strengthening exercises, but explosive jumping really seemed to get them!

Yeh, I'm not saying it's not good to throw plyos in once in a while to keep your body guessing, I just didn't have good results from making them my "core workout." Of course there has to be some variety--and why not use plyos for that, I guess.

Chris
Yeah it tears me up too! I mix it up, but will do 20 or so and my legs will just about drop. Good stuff.
Jake

Thanks Jason and Tim for the reply! By the way what do you think about working with kettlebells?

cool

the best effects with Plyos are in combination with strength exercises; complexes are very popular in the S&C world:

set of 5 (at 5-6RM) squats, folowed by 3-8 box jumps. Then rest 3 mins and repeat. Great way of developing power quickly.

Jason,

ok, that makes sense to me, because it is hard to lift that heavy explosively, so the plyos give you that. So the weights build strength and the Plyos build explosivness, but "muscle endurance" isn't really goal in this training, I'd guess--other than that if you're stronger and everything is easier then you'll probably have a bit more endrance, I'd guess...

Always nice to learn, thanks for the info .

you can always go with low intensity and high volume plyos, but that is sort of counter to their purpose. The idea is eccentric loading enhancing max concentric output. So primarily they are used in the very low volume side of the graph.
The idea is often to quit when max speed is no longer attainable(often after 2-3 reps).

I woudl treat absolute strength and power development and power endurance all separately, and only combine more than one element under very welled controlled circumstances.

'If you chase two rabbits, you'll never catch either one'