Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday were my designated plyo days this week, and let me tell you—by Saturday, my legs were questioning all my life choices. Monday and Friday were full rest days, or at least that’s what “life” says. I honestly have no idea what I did last Friday. Could’ve been productive, could’ve been asleep on the couch with a snack in hand. Either way, if you’re up late, don’t force yourself through a workout the next morning. Your nervous system will be too fried to fire properly, and you’ll just end up reinforcing bad movement patterns or tweaking something. Not worth it.
Saturday’s Long Haul
By the time Saturday rolled around, I managed to complete my third plyo session of the week, along with my usual upper-body work. And because I love questionable decisions, I had thrown in a one-rep max deadlift—which, unsurprisingly, left my back sore for days. No matter how much I focus on technique, deadlifts always wreck my back in a way no other lift does.
Maybe it’s because, when I was in high school, I found out my back was actually broken. Yeah, fun discovery. Leading up to that, I had multiple workouts where I was in serious pain, but I chalked it up to just “lifting hard.” Turns out, nope—just structural damage! Even now, after over a decade of training, my lower back still feels weak compared to the rest of my body. So deadlifts and I have this love-hate relationship: I love doing them, and they hate me right back.
Fixing the Right Hip Pop (No, Not a Dance Move)
For years, anytime I did mobility work—especially bench sit-ups—I’d feel my right hip subtly pop. Never painful, just annoying, like my body was reminding me it had a sense of humor. This week, I tried something different: holding a medicine ball between my knees while doing crunches. Game-changer. Not only did it add resistance to the movement, but it also engaged my hips in a way that stopped the popping. Sometimes, a small tweak is all it takes to fix a lingering issue.
The Fun (and Humbling) Plyo Drills
I also added a handful of more advanced plyo drills this week, like rotational hurdle jumps and single-leg broad-to-vertical hops. These kinds of movements are great because they push your limits and test your coordination. Also, they’re the drills most likely to remind me that gravity is undefeated.
Which brings me to a realization: Humans weren’t built for speed and power. We evolved to be endurance monsters, not explosive jumpers. The ability to chase something down over miles? Yeah, that’s in our DNA. The ability to dunk a basketball? Not so much. So every time I do these drills, I can feel millions of years of evolution working against me, and honestly, that underdog feeling is pretty motivating. Who doesn’t love proving nature wrong?
