Easy Plyometric Workout at Home
Plyometric workouts are easy to do at home and require no special equipment. I chose parkour-inspired movements to make it fun and useful. Plyometrics will get your heart rate up quickly. Over time, you’ll improve your bone density and resilience to injury. These moves can also help you learn to play on obstacles and condition for parkour training.
You can begin with lower-impact movements and gradually advance as your body adjusts. If you’re having trouble with motivation, read Stress-Free Training at Home for tips on how to get started and keep things fun.
If you’re already familiar with parkour or plyometric training, skip ahead to see 5 easy plyometric exercise progressions you can jump into right now.
How to Start Plyometrics
If you’re new to jumping or haven’t trained jumps in a while, start lower-impact and increase volume (number of jumps) and intensity (impact of jumps) slowly.
You might start with less than 25 very gentle jumps and see how your body responds. Ultimately, you have to figure out what works for you.
Rest after training plyometrics. Jumping puts more stress on your bones, tendons, and ligaments and requires more rest between sessions. Your body can absolutely adapt, but only if you give it adequate recovery time. Especially when starting, give yourself at least 2-3 days between workouts, or more if you feel like you need it.
For the first several months of my parkour training, I took only one class per week and did some very light jumping during the week for practice. My body needed that time to adapt, and that’s perfectly okay.
Workout Structure
Basically, you want to warm up slowly and gradually increase intensity throughout the workout.
But how much should you jump, and how much should you rest? There’s no one “right” way to structure a plyometric workout. Because jumping raises your heart rate so effectively, it’s okay to rest between jumps or exercises. If you take too much rest, just make sure you warm up again. As you gain experience, you may want to take less rest and do more consecutive jumps.
Plyometric Exercises to Try
NOTE: If you’re using a small space, please look around to make sure there are no obstacles you might trip on or bang your hands on when swinging your arms. These movements are for technical practice and conditioning. These are not meant to push your physical limits or mental game. Stay safe and train smart when you’re indoors!
Warm-Up
Warming up is essential and will help keep you from getting injured. I think of the warm-up as “reminding my body how to jump.”
Start with jogging in place, high knees, hopping on both feet, and hopping on one foot. By the time I get to two- and one-legged hops, I try to keep my knees and ankles stiff to increase springiness and reactivity.
How do I know when I’m done warming up? When my body temperature is raised and my legs feel ready for more. This takes at least a few minutes. Realistically, I may need 30 minutes or more to warm up to my maximum jump capacity. So I often start with easy jump progressions, which you can see in the videos.
1. Tuck Jumps
Tuck jumps are very useful for jumping to and over things. If you’re new to tuck jumps, start by quickly lifting one knee at a time. The next progression is jumping with both feet and lifting the knees slightly. As you get springier and more warmed up, you can lift your knees higher.
When you have the conditioning for it, try consecutive tuck jumps.
2. Standing Jumps
A standing jump is just a tuck jump that moves forward. Put some tape on the floor and try jumping to it. In parkour, these are called standing precisions or precision landings. You never know when you might want to jump on something. Best to be precise!
You can make these jumps as small or as large as you want. When you feel comfortable, try consecutive jumps.
3. Squat Jumps
Squat jumps are a plyometric basic. In parkour, I often find myself trying to jump out of a lower position. Squat jumps help train power out of that deeper hip position.
Squat, touch the ground, then either stand up quickly or jump. When you’re comfortable, you can try quicker, consecutive squat jumps. For more parkour-like movement, try keeping the feet together.
4. Jumping Over Objects
Jumping over things is fun! And it helps train your jump height. To jump over an object, combine a standing jump with a high tuck jump. Choose safe objects to jump over and stay within a comfortable height. In this video I used pillows.
5. Get Creative With Tape
Lastly, I always include some creativity in my plyometric workouts. I added several more pieces of tape in random spots on the floor, then tried jumping to them in various ways.
When you’re ready to take your jumping outside, try the Beginner Parkour Training: Stairs class on our YouTube channel. If you’re looking for more home workouts, see Easy Strength Training With No Equipment.
For more in-depth jump training, watch our Jumping & Landing Basics video.
About the Author
Rebecca writes stories about fitness and culture. She’s been training parkour since 2017 and playing with movement her whole life. @rebeccabrightly