Whether you're a competitive athlete or recreational jock looking to perform at your best, you'll want to build muscle, then train it for specific purposes. In addition to power, you'll need endurance, speed, quickness and other physical attributes to hit home runs, serve aces or slam spikes. Use a variety of muscle workouts to get in shape for your season.
Limit Strength Workout
You'll build muscle best using limit strength exercises, which have you lifting your maximum weight or close to it. Perform three to five reps of an exercise using barbells or a weight machine, repeating the sets three times. Give your muscles 24 or more hours to recover, which is the time they repair themselves and grow larger. Alternate upper- and lower-body workouts each day.
If you are new to muscle building or smaller in physical stature, you can begin a muscle-building program using dumbbells, resistance bands or bodyweight exercises such as push-ups, pull-ups, chin-ups and dips.
Muscular Endurance Workout
Once you've built your muscles, you'll want to be able to use them for longer periods of time, such as during a race or game. To train muscular endurance, use 30 to 50 percent of your maximum weight and perform eight to 12 repetitions per set. Create a circuit training workout to improve muscular endurance by performing these exercises for 30 minutes or longer, taking only one minute between sets to rest.
Explosive Power Workout
Explosive strength is your ability to make a powerful movement in one direction, like a football player coming off the line, or a sprinter coming out of the blocks at the start of a race. Train explosive strength in your muscles by moving in one direction while resisted. Weighted deadlifts and box squats and unweighted box jumps and one-leg, split-squat box jumps are examples of explosive exercises. The latter exercise has you standing behind a box or bench with one leg on it, then pushing yourself upward with the leg on the box as high as you can. Perform six to eight reps of explosive strength exercises.
Reactive Power Workout
Reactive power, also called plyometric strength, is the power generated by the coordinated movement of two or more muscles and their related tendons and joints. An example of reactive power would be a basketball player who bends his knees downward prior to jumping up for a dunk. To train your muscles for increased reactive power, perform exercises such as depth jumps, which have you jump off a box or bench, bend your knees as you land on the ground, then instantly spring upward as high as you can. Other examples of plyometric exercises include high-knee skipping or giant steps across a field or gym, and 1-2-3 jumps, which have you take two large steps, then jump as high as you can on the third step. Sprinting is another way to train muscular reactive power.
Member Comments