Plyometrics: harder, better, faster stronger | The Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans LLC

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What a week. How’d you do? Did you stick to healthy food choices, daily activity/exercise, a steady sleep schedule? Were you successful with the water challenge – the first of the 52 small changes?

I tried. I really did. And I was successful….most days. I plan to continue trying to drink more water – only good things can come of it.

This was a hard week for me – I started back at work, back in classes, back at the gym after 2.5 weeks off, kicked off my personal detox. And made it all work. I’m sore from getting back into kickboxing, and tried my first hand at P90X (holy crap), and got creative in the kitchen revisiting an old favorite: kitchen sink tacos. Literally every veggie in the fridge, marinated in fajita spices, baked sweet potato tossed with cayenne, chili powder, cinnamon and salt, and quinoa. Topped with pumpkin salsa, cilantro and avocado = delicious.

Getting back to the gym was a welcome addition, as well. I also tried my hand at P90X plyometrics. I can’t remember the last time I did plyos, but I got a reminder real quick. Plyometrics are high impact and high intensity – they can involve jumping, skipping and bounding, among other exercises. The purpose is to focus on maximizing the stretch reflex of the muscles, which teaches the muscles to produce maximum force faster. Translation: they make you faster and stronger.

Here are some examples:

This series kicked my heiny: jump squats, frog jump squats, heismans, tuck jumps (which I’m horrible at), one-leg jumps, and soooooooooooo many more. Three different exercises for 30 seconds and the fourth for one minute, then a 30 second break. Repeat. The pause button was hit several times. Needless to say, my calves and my quads are super sore. BUT, I’m hoping to see improvement and am planning to continue to do plyometrics one a week. I’m hoping it will help with my kickboxing and my training for upcoming races.

If you want to try it, there are several plyometrics workouts online. Make sure you have a good pair of shoes and some water nearby. It’s like High Intensity Interval Training on steroids.

We’ll see how I do with it next week. Keep up the good work, everyone!

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