4-Week Advanced Plyometrics Program: Skyrocket Your Explosiveness

While there is nothing wrong with training to improve the way you look, a lot of exercisers are more concerned with their performance than aesthetics.

Whether it’s for sports or to develop “functional fitness,” people who want to move better utilize a wide variety of training methods to boost things like balance, coordination, mobility, speed, agility, and strength.

Interestingly, many of these methods lead to better aesthetics, even though that is not their main purpose. This is because, in fitness, form follows function. In other words, if you train like an athlete, you are more likely to end up looking like one.   

Explosive strength, also known as power, is a critical part of training for improved performance. This is your ability to generate force rapidly and is essentially the difference between something like a slow, heavy barbell squat and a dynamic squat jump.

There are several ways to develop muscle power, including the Olympic lifts (variations of the snatch and clean & jerk) and compensatory acceleration training.

However, when it comes to convenience and effectiveness, plyometrics are hard to beat.

As a veteran personal trainer, I’ve been using and teaching plyometrics for close to 40 years and have found them to be incredibly effective for improving things like vertical jump height and sprinting speed. My experiences with plyometrics are not unusual, and numerous studies support their usefulness (1).

In this article, I discuss the ins and outs of plyometric training and share a four-week advanced plyometric program for guaranteed gains in explosive strength.

What is Plyometric Training?

Quite correctly, most strength training exercises are performed using a smooth controlled tempo and very little momentum. This makes your workouts as safe and effective as possible, especially for triggering hypertrophy or muscle growth.

However, because of the specificity principle, your body adapts to the type of training you do, and performing your exercises slowly trains your body to be slow.

So, if you want to move fast and become more explosive, that’s the way you need to work out.

Plyometric exercises, which include a range of different jumps and throws, are performed as quickly as possible, triggering something called the stretch-shortening reflex (SSR) to maximize muscle power output.

In simple terms, when you rapidly load and stretch a muscle, e.g., quickly dropping into a squat, your muscles store and then release energy like a coiled spring. This mechanism allows you to produce more force than usual, leading to a more explosive counter-contraction.

The SSR is highly trainable and doing plyometric exercises will enhance your ability to produce more force at will.

Plyometric Training Principles

There are a few guidelines that you must observe when doing plyometrics. Failure to follow these rules will undermine your progress and could turn a very effective training method into one that fails to produce results and causes injuries.

Plyometrics is an Advanced Training Method

Jumping and throwing expose your muscles and joints to much more stress than conventional strength training exercises. As such, plyometrics are not suitable for beginners, or those suffering from chronic aches and pains.

Also, you must master basic squats, lunges, push-ups, etc., before attempting the plyometric versions of these exercises. After all, if you can’t perform squats slowly, you probably won’t be able to do squat jumps properly, either.

Warm-Ups Are Compulsory

While plyometric training is an effective way to increase muscle power, the exercises are very strenuous. Rapidly stretching and loading your muscles exposes them to a lot of stress, typically several times your body weight.

Doing these exercises without a warm-up is a surefire recipe for injury.

So, never skip your warm-ups, and follow this sequence to ensure your body is ready for the demands of plyometric training:

1. 5-10 minutes of easy cardio
2. Dynamic mobility/flexibility exercises
3. Practice sets performed at a low level of intensity, e.g., 50% of maximal effort

Related Guide: How to Warm Up for Strength Training

Focus on Training Quality, Not Quantity

While you CAN do high-rep plyometrics to boost your fitness and burn kilocalories, this is not the best way to build muscle power. Remembering the specificity principle, if you do so many squat jumps that your performance decreases, it’s unlikely that your maximum jump height will improve.

Consequently, rep counts for effective plyometrics are usually pretty low – fewer than ten reps per set being quite normal. Rest periods also tend to be quite long to ensure you are fully recovered for each set and able to put maximal effort into each one.

In summary, if you want to improve power, your sets of plyometric training should be short and end before fatigue sets in and you feel your performance starting to decrease. In other words, your first rep should look the same as your last.

The Floor is Lava!

To make any plyometric exercise effective, the transition between the stretch/loading phase and the concentric contraction phase should be as rapid as possible. For example, there should be no pause at the bottom of a squat jump or plyo push-up.

One way to do this is to imagine the floor is covered in red-hot lava, and you want to explode away from it as fast as possible.

Apply this mindset to every plyometric exercise and you’ll be sure to reap all the available benefits.

Section Summary:

• Only do plyometrics if you have a solid foundation of conventional strength training
• Always warm up thoroughly before doing plyometrics
• End sets of plyometrics when your performance starts to decrease
• Make the transition between eccentric and concentric phases as fast as possible

4-Week Advanced Plyometric Program

This program comprises three workouts a week. Ideally, you should train on non-consecutive days, e.g., Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This will allow enough time between workouts for rest and recovery.

Each workout includes exercises for all your major muscle groups. That said, if you feel that any body parts need a little extra attention, please feel free to do some additional conventional strength training exercises to plug any gaps, e.g., biceps curls for your arms, lat pulldowns for your back, etc.

Essential Equipment

One of the reasons I love plyometrics so much is that you don’t need a lot of fancy equipment to get a good workout. In many instances, the only thing required is some space and a sturdy platform, e.g., a bench or step.

This is the equipment you will need to follow this program:

• Adjustable 16″ to 24″ box
• Heavy kettlebell e.g., 40 to 55 pounds
• Heavy medicine ball, e.g., 12 to 25 pounds
• Exercise mat for floor exercises
• Resistance bands

You’ll also need a smooth, flat wall to throw your medicine ball against and sufficient floor space to do 8-10 consecutive hops, jumps, and bounds, i.e., 15-20 yards.

Four-Week Progression Plan

You are only as fit as your last workout and if you want to develop your fitness further, your training must be progressive. In other words, your next workout must be a little more demanding than the last one.

But how do you progress with plyometric training? After all, most plyometric exercises use your body weight for resistance, and doing more reps may hurt rather than help your gains.

While you can do weighted plyos, and I’ve included a couple in this program, the most convenient way to make plyometric training progressive is to increase the volume of each workout over the coming weeks.

To that end, notice that instead of doing the same number of sets each week, you’ll be going from two sets to four so that your explosive strength gradually improves. In addition, you should endeavor to work a little harder from one week to the next by jumping higher and further and throwing harder.

You can also increase your rep count slightly, but never at the expense of generating maximal force. If doing more reps hurts your performance, the benefit of doing extra work will be lost.

Related: Progressive Overload: The Science Behind Maximizing Muscle Growth

Rest, Recovery, and Additional Workouts

Despite being a relatively low-tech, straightforward form of training, plyometrics can take a lot out of your body. It’s especially tough on your central and peripheral nervous systems, which typically take longer to recover than your muscles.

Consequently, you must balance your workouts with adequate rest. This is why I’ve limited you to just three plyo workouts per week.

That said, if you want to work out more often, I suggest you limit yourself to doing 2-3 easy cardio workouts. Provided you don’t go too hard or train for too long, cardio should enhance recovery by oxygenating your muscles and speeding up the removal of the waste products that can cause delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS).

Workout 1

	Exercise	Sets	Reps	Recovery
1	Box jump	Week 1 – 2 sets Week 2 – 3 sets Week 3 – 3 sets Week 4 – 4 sets	6-8	2-3 minutes
2	Split squat jump		6-8 per leg	2-3 minutes
3	Broad jumps for distance		4-6	2-3 minutes
4	Kettlebell swing		12-15	2-3 minutes
5	Plyo push-up		8-10	2-3 minutes
6	Medicine ball slam		8-10	2-3 minutes
7	Leg raise throw down		8-10	2-3 minutes

 

Workout 2

	Exercise	Sets	Reps	Recovery
1	Depth jump	Week 1 – 2 sets Week 2 – 3 sets Week 3 – 3 sets Week 4 – 4 sets	4-6	2-3 minutes
2	Bulgarian split squat jump		6-8 per leg	2-3 minutes
3	Hops for distance		4-6 per leg	2-3 minutes
4	Banded broad jump		8-10	2-3 minutes
5	Kneeling chest pass throw		8-10	2-3 minutes
6	Rotational medicine ball slam		6-8 per side	2-3 minutes
7	Medicine ball sit-up throw		10-12	2-3 minutes

Workout 3

 

	Exercise	Sets	Reps	Recovery
1	Dumbbell squat jump	Week 1 – 2 sets Week 2 – 3 sets Week 3 – 3 sets Week 4 – 4 sets	6-8	2-3 minutes
2	Single-leg depth jump		4-6 per leg	2-3 minutes
3	Bounding for distance		6-8 per leg	2-3 minutes
4	Overhead medicine ball throw		8-10	2-3 minutes
5	Shot put throw		8-10 per arm	2-3 minutes
6	Kneeling medicine ball slam		10-12	2-3 minutes
7	Rotational medicine ball throw		6-8 per side	2-3 minutes

Closing Thoughts

Plyometrics is one of the best ways to increase power. Once a “secret” Russian training method, plyometrics are now part of mainstream fitness, although a lot of exercisers and trainers don’t know how to perform or program them correctly.

Contrary to common opinion, high rep sets of jumps, hops, throws, etc., are not the best way to do plyometrics, and they won’t do much for your explosive strength. Instead, they can actually train you to become slower and less powerful, even if they make you leaner and fitter.

Instead, for plyometrics to be effective, you must focus more on quality and less on quantity, which will allow you to put more effort into each and every rep. Combined with adequate rest between sets, this is the key to maximizing your power gains.

Follow my program for the next four weeks and your speed, agility, vertical jump, and upper body explosiveness will noticeably improve. And remember; the best way to look like an athlete is to train like one.

Questions or comments? Please drop me a line below and I’ll get back to you ASAP!

References:

1. Cui J, Liu Y, He F, Bu Y. Systematic review and meta-analysis on the effect of plyometric vs. resistance training on lower limb explosive power and speed. J Sports Med Phys Fitness. 2025 Jan;65(1):69-79. doi: 10.23736/S0022-4707.24.15819-7. Epub 2024 Sep 25. PMID: 39320024.

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