Robert S. Maher Blog: Top 7 Plyometric Pushups

Saturday, April 30, 2016

Top 7 Plyometric Pushups

Remember when you were little, and your parents would try to get you to eat a certain food you didn’t want to eat? The conversation, in some form or another, would go like this:

Parent: Eat your [insert yucky food here].
You: I don’t want to.
Parent: Why not?
You: Because I don’t like it.
Parent: But you haven’t even tried it. How can you know you don’t like it if you haven’t even tried it?

Whoa. That’s some pretty hardcore psychology our parents dropped on us. But still, we remained strong in our convictions. How do we know? We just do!

The point is, it can be tough to change people’s minds about certain things, and it doesn’t get any easier as we grow up. If you weren’t a picky eater and that last example was lost on you, just ask any sports fan how they feel about Tom Brady’s suspension being upheld on Tuesday, and you’ll see what we mean about unflinching opinions.

People take very hard stances about certain things, whether they be about movies, sports, politics, and all sorts of other subjects we won’t be touching with a ten-foot pole.

But one area we’d like to delve into would be calisthenics — specifically, the idea that there are only a handful of exercises in the field of bodyweight training. We run into this argument almost every day:

“I don’t want to do calisthenics because I’d get bored only doing pull-ups, crunches and push-ups all day.”

Now, if you’re at all familiar with A Shot of Adrenaline (or calisthenics as a whole), you know there are a lot of things wrong with that. For one, there are a whole lot of exercises in the world of calisthenics that have nothing to do with pull-ups, crunches or pull-ups. If you don’t believe us, you should take a look at this gigantic list of bodyweight exercises we’ve compiled.

So we are constantly trying to change people’s perception on bodyweight training. But OK, let’s play devil’s advocate here and say that all calisthenics has to offer are those three exercises. Well, that doesn’t mean there aren’t a whole lot of variations on each of them. And today, we’re going to focus on different push-ups you can do — specifically, plyometric push-ups.

Plyometrics, also known as “jump training” or “plyos”, are exercises in which muscles exert maximum force in short intervals of time, with the goal of increasing power.

So what kind of push-ups exist within the plyometric world? Well that’s what we’re going to show you here!

These exercises are sure to break up the monotony of standard push-ups, and do a whole lot for building strength and muscle. That’s right, bodybuilders — you can get a toned, cut chest without subjecting yourself to the hazards of the bench press.

Just keep in mind, these exercises range in varying degrees of difficulty, so exercise caution as always.

So without further ado, here are our favorite plyometric push-ups. Give them a try and see if they don’t change your mind about how awesomely diverse a calisthenics exercise can be.