Plyometric Chest Exercises
If you’re looking to push through a plateau in your training, or just try something extra challenging in your chest workout, try one of these plyometric chest exercises that I’ve been doing lately (and having a real love/hate relationship with). Be forewarned, though… they’re pretty intense.
What’s A Plyometric Chest Exercise?
Plyometrics is a term for a particular type of exercise favoring fast, explosive movements. The idea is to train the muscles to produce a lot of speed and power as quickly as possible. While this is related to raw strength, this isn’t necessarily the same thing.
As an example, someone who can jump really high might not be able to squat a huge amount of weight. But, they can explosively accelerate their body very quickly and thereby launch themselves into the air with greater speed than an Olympic weight-lifter might be able to.
These fast, explosive movements have obvious benefits for athletes, since many athletic events require speed and explosive power more than anything else (well, aside from coordination). Aside from speed and power, plyometrics also encourages the neurological connections between the mind and the muscle, potentially leading to quicker reaction times.
Plyometric Chest Exercise #1
So let’s apply these principles to a chest workout. For our first plyometric chest exercise, we’re going to go old school and dig out a good old-fashioned body weight exercise: the push up. But not just any push-up. We’re going to do explosive or, as they’re sometimes called, “Marine Corps” pushups.
It looks just like a regular push-up, but instead of simply pressing yourself up into a plank position, you’re going to lower yourself down and then spring yourself up into the air as fast and high as you can so that your hands clear the ground by several inches. As you land, lower yourself back down, and then spring back up into the air, as many times as you can.
Once you get the hang of this, you should be able to launch yourself high enough that you can clap your hands before you lower yourself back down. Even if you’re used to doing push-ups, don’t be surprised if you find plyometric pushups to be a surprising challenge. You’re using a different set of fast-twitch muscle fibers to do these explosive movements versus a slower, more controlled push-up movement.
The great thing about this exercise, of course, is that it’s free. You just need a stretch of ground that you can do this on, and the will to actually do it consistently. For our next exercise, we’ll need a piece of equipment.
Plyometric Chest Exercise #2
For this exercise, we’re going to essentially do the same thing as in #1, but with a little twist: we’re going to do it on a Bosu ball. For those of you unfamiliar with a Bosu ball, it’s basically half of an exercise ball with a firm plastic disc as a base. Most people use it by standing on the base with the ball part on the ground, using it as a wobble board to make various exercises more difficult.
We’re going to do the same thing, but we’re not doing to stand on it. Instead, grab either end of the disc part of the Bosu ball with both hands, and get into the plank position. Since the ball part is on the ground, you’re already going to be wobbling a little bit. If you’ve never done this before, you’re going to want to do a few regular push ups on the Bosu like this just to get used to it.
Once you’re ready, lower yourself down, and like before, launch yourself up into the air as quickly as possible so your hands (still gripping the Bosu) clear the ground. As you go up into the air, bend your arms slightly to draw the Bosu up into the air. As you come down, the Bosu will compress beneath you a bit. Launch yourself back up, as many times as you can.
I actually find using the Bosu to do plyometric pushups is a lot easier on my hands and wrists than otherwise, because the Bosu will give a little rather than just landing back down on concrete or a hardwood floor. But the instability created by the Bosu definitely ramps up the difficulty level.
Give it a try, and be ready for some soreness the next day! As a general rule of thumb, it’s best not to do plyometric movements for any body part more than three times a week, so that your body can fully recover.
Stay healthy!