GET EXPLOSIVE

Explosive training has tons of benefits and should be done by everyone at least once in a while.

I am not talking only about weightlifting like clean or snatch. I am thinking here about jumps, flips, muscle ups, push-ups, and pull-ups. All of these can benefit you greatly.

First,  all of them will challenge your mind.

They are all compounds movements and require good skill at doing them. So they will add a bit of freshness to your current workout routine. Because they are all compound movements they activate multiple muscle groups at the same time which means you’re burning more calories and you’re teaching your body how to act like one thing rather than isolating it into small pieces.

Also because they require some skills they improve your overall body awareness which will help you in making progress on other exercises as well.

Another advantage of explosive exercises is that they trigger large muscle fibers.

This means that you activate your fast twitch fibers that gives you nice toned and muscular physique and when they’re developed it’s hard to get rid of them. Also focusing your training on large muscle fibers (fast twitch) prevent your body from converting them into slow twitched ones. Yea it sucks but if our training is high endurance based our bodies can convert these strong muscle fibers into endurance one which requires more attention to be maintained.

Also, explosive exercises, when done in an endurance rep scheme, can still prevent you from the conversion of muscle fibers into the endurance one just because even if you’re doing a big amount of reps they still require speed which activates fast twitch fibers and builds strength endurance.

They improve heart rate conditioning.

Think of it this way what is easier on your breath doing 10 reps of bench press with 60% 1 RM or doing them explosively?

Because fast reps require more energy they make your lungs and heart to work harder to provide you with more oxygen. Yes first few reps get the fuel from anaerobic processes but if you’re going for more reps they will challenge your heart as well

So how to incorporate them into the workout routine?

Well, I would say rotate them with strength movements and do them at the beginning of your training because of the fact that they are highly demanding and may compromise your strength on the later parts of your training. So if you’re doing muscle ups it may be hard to hit PR’s on weighted pull-ups.

Other option can be to pick an easier progression/lower weight and focus on perfect form, high speed and go for a large number of reps at the end of your workouts just to have some fun, burn some more calories and activate all of the muscle fibers.

B. Strong&Healthy!
What type of explosive exercises you’re doing?