Feel the Burn: Plyometrics for Fun and Profit -The Toast

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Previous installments of “Feel the Burn” can be found here. Last Time: Changing Your Body.

Jump around! Jump around! Etc. Plyometrics are something I, personally, am utterly atrocious at, having been magically born with literally zero explosive power. I have the box jump of a senior citizen. I could not dodge a wrench. You get the idea. Accordingly, I try to do them a lot, and they really are pretty fun. You’ll never get bored doing a plyo workout, but you’ll regret your wicked ways.

I’ve been getting some cardio-based requests, so here’s an at-home no-equipment mostly-lower-body plyometric workout that leaves me dripping and snorting and guzzling water, which I will help you break down into a less ridiculous form. This, incidentally, is what I would teach in a grade school gym class if some sort of Freaky Friday-esque condition caused me to find myself teaching a grade school gym class. Become again a little child, and remember how you bounced off things. LET’S FOCUS THAT ENERGY, CHILDREN. It’s really fun, I promise. It’s super hard, depending on how ambitious you want to be, but you’ll have a great time.

Now, before we get into this, let’s remember you have breakables. Don’t come crying to me in the comments because you broke your framed Leif Garrett poster. CLEAR SOME SPACE.

Let’s warm up, because JUMPING. I do not mean stretching, stretching cold is no good. Stretch later. When I suggest you warm up, that can be jogging in place for a little bit or five minutes on the elliptical or whatever floats your boat. Just something that makes you literally feel slightly warm and capable of movement. The warm-up I do for this particular workout is not really for the balance-impaired, but in case you’re feeling very BRING IT, go ahead:

Warm-up: Single Leg Squat Touches, fifteen per side. Do that three times. You’ll probably be noticeably better at one side than the other. Try to look in a mirror while you do these to keep your chest up, and because you’ll be less likely to fall on your face.

Now, the workout itself: Should you do this every day and also lift something over your head when the spirit moves you, you would actually get into pretty decent shape, which is nice. I do four sets, 15 reps of each exercise, unless otherwise indicated, but you’ll know halfway through the first one how many sets you can handle. Honestly, do a full set in the morning and a full set at night and work your way up, whatever. AND, let me be clear, I absolutely find myself taking little water breaks in the middle of each set, because I am no good at jumping.

PRIORITIES: Soft landing, taking it slow, listening to your body. Billy, don’t be a hero. Captain Superquads wants you to live.

(15) Broad jumps (the title of my future book about plyo workouts for women, but also this). You just jump forward. You’re familiar with jumping up, from weddings, now you jump forward and try to land softly. Squat down to explode up and out. You’ll be great at it. If you’re in a gym, just do it fifteen times in one direction. If you’re in your house, jump once, turn around, jump back. Easy.

(15) Squat jumps. Literally my least-favourite thing in the world. Squat on your heels, explode up, land on the balls of your feet, sink back down.

(15) Burpees. You have my permission to take like ten minutes to get your fifteen burpees in. I would give you fewer burpees, but they are SO GOOD FOR YOU. If you’re really finding them horrifically awful, I recommend doing a 100 Burpee challenge, which you can find support for all over the internet. This is when you do a burpee on day one, then two burpees on day two, then three burpees on day three, ETC, until we fast-forward the tape and you are a robot killer who can do a hundred burpees in a row.

(4 boxes of 4, each leg) Agility squares. Oh, these are fun!!! I love these. They’re basically single-leg hops, and you make an imaginary square which you hop into each corner of. Like HOP forward on one leg, that’s one corner, HOP LEFT, that’s the second corner, HOP BACKWARDS, that’s the third corner, HOP RIGHT, that’s the fourth corner. Then do that all four times. You never put the second leg down. Until you finish doing the whole thing, because then you do it on your other leg. It’s great!

(!6) Ski jumps. Go find a mountain. HA, fitness joke. Sorry. No, just put a broom or something down on the floor so it’s pointing away from you, and stand with your feet together on one side of it. Keeping your feet together in the air, jump sideways up and over to the other side of the broom. Like this, but with your feet together, because, for some reason, it feels more like a game if your feet are together.

(15) Tuck jumps. This is the canonical jumping of your youth, i.e. up in the air, but you try to kick yourself in the butt each time by, you know, tucking at the top. It looks like this. I do not get that kind of air, at least not after my first set.

(16) Lunge jumps. Or “jumping lunges,” whatever you call them. Do a lunge, leap out of it, switch your legs, land with the opposite leg forward. IF you are totally dead and hate me, you can just do this as non-jumping alternating lunges, I’m not a monster. Yeah, you may want to do that.

K, now do it at least once more, ideally three more times. You’re welcome!

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