Amount of Plyometric Exercises Per Week

Plyometrics are explosive exercises that effectively increase muscular power. To be considered a plyometric exercise, the movement has to include a brief stretching period, followed by a contraction of maximum power and speed. Scheduling your workouts so that your body has enough recovery time is an important component in effectively increasing muscular power.

  1. Workout Frequency

    • Plyometrics should be performed no more than one to two times per week. Strength and conditioning professional Brian Mackenzie recommends giving your body three days off in between each workout. This means a Monday and Friday routine would be appropriate. Certified strength and conditioning specialists David H. Potach and Dr. Donald A. Chu note that 48 to 72 hours of rest is adequate, which means you could get three workouts in every week. You want your body to be fully recovered when it comes time for the next workout so that you can perform each plyometric exercise at your highest capability.

    Importance of Rest

    • Plyometrics are intense exercises that place a significant amount of stress on your muscles and other skeletal structures, as well as your neuromuscular system. After your workouts, your muscles will be left damaged and sore. As a result, the force and power that your muscles will be able to produce will be limited. A 2005 study published in the "European Journal of Applied Physiology" found that the exercise-induced muscle damage following plyometrics lasted for three days and this damage caused a decrease in performance. If you were to do plyometrics before your muscles are recovered, your workout wouldn’t be effective because your muscles wouldn’t be able to perform in their top form.

    Considerations

    • The higher number of contacts you have in your workout, the more rest your body will need. When you’re starting out, your workouts should include no more than about 40 contacts, which means that you land from a total of 40 jumps. Those experienced in plyometrics can include up to 150 to 200 contacts in their workouts. Two days off can be adequate for lower-volume plyometric workouts, but three days are needed as the number of contacts in your workout increases. To ensure your body is able to fully adapt and fully recover from each of your plyometric workouts, assign an appropriate number of repetitions in each session based on your training level. Focus should be on performing each repetition as explosively as possible instead of increasing the number of reps of each exercise. If you do too many reps, your performance will be adversely affected and you’ll increase your risk of injury if you’re fatigued.

    Recovery Between Sets

    • Just as important as rest in between your workouts is the amount of rest you give your body in between each set. According to certified strength and conditioning specialist Dr. Matthew R. Kutz, high-intensity exercises of short durations, such as plyometrics, utilizes the phosphagen energy system. During each set of plyometrics, the energy stores are depleted. To allow the phosphagen system to replenish its energy stores in between each set so that your muscles are ready to go, 30 seconds to three minutes of rest between sets is needed.