For an athlete looking to develop explosive muscle power, good for real sports situations where you’re moving faster than the slow motions of traditional weight lifting, plyometrics is a great way to do so. Plyometrics exercises help your body to develop this power through exercises that put some sort of load on your muscles, leading to a little elastic tension, before it is released. However, most plyometrics exercises covered tend to focus on the lower body. If you’re looking for the same benefits, you need to turn to plyometric pushups, dips, and pullups to increase your muscle power for the upper body. What follows is a brief discussion of the basics of plyometric pushups, dips, and pullups to help you along.

Pushups

Perhaps the easiest among plyometric pushups, dips, and pullups to do, chances are you’ve already seen people doing plyometric pushups before. Have you ever seen anyone push up off the ground hard enough that they can clap before hitting the ground again? That’s essentially a plyometric pushup, though clapping isn’t required. When you do your push up, use enough explosive force that your hands leave the ground. When you touch down again and lower your chest, push up again right away.

Dips

Among plyometric pushups, dips, and pullups, dips are among the most difficult to do, and should not be attempted unless you have enough strength to do standard dips well. This goes for all plyometrics exercises; without a solid strength base for the fundamentals, you’ll just hurt yourself. The easiest way to do plyometric dips is to have two parallel bars with a little room. When you push up from your dip, use enough force to let your hands off the bar and move a little ways forward, traveling along the bars. Just as with the pushups, you want your motions to be as explosive as possible.

Pullups

The last exercise that we will explore in plyometric pushups, dips, and pullups is the plyometric pullup. Chances are, you can guess the modification made to the standard pullup that you will do for this exercise. Each pullup should be explosive in motion, rapid, and at the end, should have enough force that when you let go of the bar, your hands leave the bar, going above it a little. It’s these rapid explosive motions, which better imitate, say, the fast swing of a baseball bad, that make plyometrics ideal for sports training. So if you’re looking to improve your upper body power, then start working on plyometric pushups, dips, and pullups to see new improvements.