In the world of fitness, people are always looking for new and innovative ways to train that will help them see better results quickly. And with the thousands of methods out there, it can get pretty overwhelming to pick the one that’s most suitable for you. And if you’ve ever been on the lookout for a new training technique, I’m sure that you’ve already heard of the term “Plyometrics”, it’s a method that’s quickly gaining popularity and for a good reason too. It can easily build up power, agility, and speed. One question that I get asked about a lot is whether or not power cleans are plyometrics.
Although power cleans share a lot of similarities with plyometric exercises, they’re not considered plyometrics due to the fact that it only focuses on building up strength rather than speed and agility.
In this article, we’ll explain why power cleans aren’t considered plyometrics and what other types of exercises are plyometrics.
Table of Contents
Are Power Cleans Plyometrics?
What are Plyometric Exercises Based on?
In order to answer this question, we first need to really understand what plyometrics is all about. Plyos for short, it’s a unique method of training that revolves around adapting your muscles to produce power in form of strength and speed. Plyometric exercises usually focus on stretching the muscles and then immediately contracting them to their optimum in order to build up their explosiveness.
This is the common definition that you’ll find all over the internet and while it’s somewhat true, it’s missing one important factor. In order for the muscles to stretch and contract at a fast rate, they need something that’s called “the myotatic stretch reflex”. It’s a natural response of the body that causes the muscles to immediately contract if they’re suddenly stretched in order to keep them at a constant length to avoid any possible tears.
And this myotatic stretch reflex is the most essential component of plyometrics. You’re basically taking advantage of it in order to increase muscle contraction which can build up power, speed, and agility.
Another thing you need to keep in mind is that to fully activate the myotatic stretch reflex, the contact between the ground and body part that controls the muscle that you’re trying to work can’t be more than 120 milliseconds (0.12 seconds) during each repetition. For example, if you’re doing plyo box jumps, you can’t stay on the ground for longer than that time and jump right after you land. This is the true form of Plyometrics.
Now that we fully understand what plyometric exercises are all about, let’s gather all the important information that we learned about them so far:
- They involve a stretch of the muscles that are immediately followed by their contraction
- They revolve around the myotatic stretch reflex
- The contact time between the body part that controls the muscle and the ground can’t be more than 0.12 seconds
Are Power Cleans the Same as Other Plyometric Exercises?
Now that we know the major points that differentiate between normal strength exercises and plyometrics, let’s compare power cleans to them to figure out if we can consider them plyo exercises as well.
In order to do so, we first need to know what power cleans are all about. They’re pretty much an advanced strength training exercise that uses a lot of muscle groups and is mostly performed using a barbell that’s resting on the ground and in which the athlete has to lift it to his/her shoulder in an explosive manner.
- Do they involve a stretch of the muscles that’s followed immediately by their contraction? That’s definitely the case since when you’re preparing to lift the barbell, most of your muscles are stretched and when you end up lifting it, you’re immediately contracting and putting them to work.
- Do they revolve around the myotatic stretch reflex? Since you’re stretching the muscles in a sudden and explosive way while performing power cleans, the body will naturally respond to it by activating the myotatic stretch reflex in order to avoid any muscle tears, however, this activation will not be at full capacity and that’s due to the lack of the third point.
- Is the contact time between the barbell (which is in this case what controls the muscles that we’re training since you’re holding it with your hands) and the ground less than 0.12 seconds? Unless you’re some kind of superhero, it’s near impossible to limit the contact time between those two to 0.12 seconds, especially since power cleans are one of the hardest exercises to perform. Even 1 second is way too short for this type of movement and you’ll need to be super fast in order to trigger the stretch reflex to its full capacity.
By comparing the different characteristics of plyometrics exercises and power cleans, we can conclude that they’re not plyometrics but share a lot of similarities.
Conclusion:
Even though power cleans aren’t considered plyometrics, they’re still one of the best exercises that you can do because they offer a lot of benefits. They increase muscle coordination and explosiveness, power output, and athletic ability generally. It’s a highly recommended exercise for advanced lifters that you should definitely try.
