Ballistic Exercises for Muscle Endurance

Ballistic exercises are plyometric, or power-training, movements that are performed with a high rate of acceleration to increase muscular power, or the rate at which your muscles can perform work. Normally, ballistics are performed with around three to six repetitions and up to six sets to build power. However, ballistic exercises, especially body-weight plyometrics, can be adapted to improve muscular endurance. This involves doing higher repetitions, around 10 to 15, and doing up to three sets with only 30 seconds of rest between each, which adapts your muscles to doing longer, continuous effort.

  1. Explosive Upper Body

    • Several ballistic movements can build upper-body endurance in sets of 10 to 15 repetitions. Clapping pushups, for example, work your chest, shoulders and arms by making you press explosively off the ground, clapping your hands together and absorbing the impact on the way down. Kipping pull-ups, in which you swing your legs and hips to lift your body to the bar, work your back and biceps, and the explosive swing allows you to do enough reps to challenge muscular endurance. Similarly, muscle-ups use ballistic movement to lift your body to and above the bar, engaging all your upper-body muscles.

    Legs to Endure

    • There are many plyometric options to choose from for lower-body endurance workouts. Box jumps are a popular ballistic movement that really develops explosive drive through your hips, quadriceps and calves. Lateral bounds do the same while intensifying the work of your hip abductors and knee stabilizers. To really target the stamina of your quadriceps, hamstrings and glute muscles, perform sets of squat jumps and alternating lunge jumps, which will make your muscles burn and your heart pound. Again, aim for higher-repetition sets, maxing out between 10 and 15 and resting for only 30 seconds between sets.

    Full Ballistic Body

    • Olympic-style lifts and power training tend to focus on compound movements that engage muscles all over the body, and by performing higher repetitions at 65- to 75-percent of your one-rep maximum, you can build stamina in your upper body, lower body and core simultaneously. Barbell or kettlebell power cleans, snatches and jerks, for instance, are easily adapted for full-body endurance training. Other exercises can provide similar emphasis with little or no equipment, such as the burpee, which is a very challenging body-weight exercise that combines the plyometric pushup and jump squat.

    Sample Training Circuit

    • For an effective, heart-thumping endurance workout, try a back-to-back ballistic circuit with these six exercises: clapping pushups, alternating lunge jumps, kipping pull-ups, burpees, sit-up medicine ball throws and kettlebell snatches. Perform 10 to 15 reps of each movement with up to 30 seconds rest in between. You can do this circuit for a set number of rounds or you can challenge yourself by doing as many rounds as possible in a certain time, such as 20 minutes. Either way, you can continue to test your stamina by increasing the number of rounds, which intensifies the workout and shows your progress.