Ballistic training focuses on improving the athlete’s explosiveness via jumps and throws with maximum speed.
The word ballistics originates from the Greek word ballein, which means “to throw”. Ballistic training focuses on improving your explosiveness.
During training the athlete accelerates an object faster than necessary. Moving its center of mass quickly from point A to point B. The velocity of the required movement needs to be high.
More precisely, ballistic training consists of a concentric acceleration phase and an eccentric deceleration phase with ground contact time (amortization phase) lasting longer than 0.25 seconds.
Therefore, all Olympic lifts (e.g. Power Clean, Snatch) are ballistic in nature.
Ballistic Training Recommendations
Generally, it is recommended to engage in ballistics prior to plyometrics training. Ballistics are a good preparation for plyometrics because of the additional weight being used.
That results in the amortization phase being > 0.25 seconds.
Oftentimes athletes cannot do plyometric exercises in true plyometric fashion because they are too slow.
Since plyometrics require a ground contact time of less than 0.25 seconds, resistance (weight) has to be on the lower end. Otherwise the athlete wastes time decelerating and hence exceeds 0.25 seconds of ground contact.
It is very practical to have athletes do ballistic training exercises using heavier resistance to improve plyometrics using lighter resistance.
It is important to ensure that before the athlete starts doing the exercises at maximum effort they are being done correctly with regards to form because that leads to maximum performance improvements.
Therefore, try to carefully follow the exercise descriptions.
Related Ballistic Training Exercises
Training Zone
We provide you with some more workouts and training tips you may be interested in to optimize your training.
Also, make sure that you warm up properly before and stretch out after your training session.
