Explosive bodyweight exercises for testosterone you can do at home

Doing heavy weight training is the best thing you can do, however sometimes you can’t go to the gym or some just don’t like the gym. Fortunately there are other ways to boost your testosterone levels with different kind of exercises at home…

To get the optimal testosterone secretion you need to train with a plan…

• Maximize muscle fiber recruitment (stress a large muscle group)
• Metabolic stress (short rest)
• High to moderate intensity (should be a difficult activity)

There are a great many reasons to train explosive and here are a few awesome ones.

Training explosively:

• recruits larger motor units sooner or more efficiently. Since larger motor units (composed predominantly of Type II muscle fibers, or fast twitch) have higher neural thresholds than do smaller motor units, therefore they are stimulated only under greater intensity training. Bodybuilders have mostly fast twitch muscles.
• provides great neural adaption (that’s how you get strong)
• improves motor unit recruitment
• improves the rate coding mechanism. Rate coding is defined as the frequency of neural impulses sent to motor neurons. In this way, force is increased without the recruitment of additional motor units.

Training explosively can be done with or without weights. My preference explosive exercises are ~-40-50m sprints, muscle ups, dips, jump squats, and sometimes clapping pushups.

As a side note, you recover more rapidly from bodyweight exercises, because it’s self-limiting. If you can’t do another one, you just can’t, unlike lifting weights, where you can always take weights off the bar. Don’t get me wrong, I do prefer to do my heavy lifts first in the workout and then the explosive exercises. Although all my exercises are as explosive as possible.

You might think that weight training is a superior stimulus for muscle activation, but as shown in this study, one leg squats have the same muscle activation and testosterone response as doing weighted back squats.

Also, doing bodyweight jump squats for 60 sec will significantly increase testosterone levels. It’s because fatigue sets in rapidly. (High metabolic stress) (R)

This study also shows that doing hurdle jumps (explosive and intense) significantly increased testosterone levels.

A full out 400 meter sprint will result in a significant increase in LH, FSH and testosterone. (R)

400 meters is quite intense. Fortunately it’s not needed to sprint for that distance to get a optimal testosterone response.

250 meter sprints, (R) 30 sec cycle sprints (R) and even 6 sec sprints (R), result in an acute increase in testosterone and growth hormone.

It comes down to, any form of intense, high metabolic stress, explosive movement stressing a large muscle group induces a great testosterone response.

Just make sure your rest isn’t too long in between sets (longer than 90 sec, but I prefer to keep it below 60 sec), otherwise the testosterone response won’t be as good. The longer the rest, the less the metabolic stress.

There is also a specific way to train for explosiveness.

It’s called plyometric training.

Plyometric training works like this:

Take bodyweight squats for instance,

As you go down into the squat position, your quads stretch. And as they stretch, they build up potential energy. When you get at the bottom of the squat, that energy has built up maximally.

To utilize this energy, shoot back up as fast as possible. If you pause at the bottom, the energy is lost as heat, so you won’t get the same explosive benefit from the exercise.

Plyometric exercises are the best kind of training to increase explosiveness. (R)

Plyometric exercises increase testosterone levels and testosterone has a significant influence on explosiveness. (R, R)

So it’s  kind of a cool loop.

So how do you do this?

First off, pick a movement, push-ups, squats, pull-ups, or if you want to be a bit more advanced – one arm push ups, one leg squats or muscle ups.

Let’s take squats again for e.g… as you go down into the movement, and get to the bottom, explode up as fast as possible, and repeat the next rep right away.

If you can do more than 15 squats per set, advance to a more difficult exercise. For e.g. hold onto a weight while performing the movement, or try doing one leg squats.

An example for a simple explosive workout:

• Handstand shoulder press (10 reps, proceed immediately to next exercise/rest 30-60 sec)
• Push-ups/one arm push-ups (10 reps, proceed immediately to next exercise/rest 30-60 sec)
• Inverted rows/one arm inverted rows (10 reps, proceed immediately to next exercise/rest 30-60 sec)
• Jump squats/one leg squats (10 reps, proceed immediately to next exercise/rest 30-60 sec)
• Full out 40 meter sprint

Now rest 1 min after the cycle. Repeat the cycle up to 2-3 times, and between 3-4 times a week.

These plyometric exercises will improve your balance, unilateral strength, your functionality and overall health significantly.

And remember, it’s always best to be active and do some kind of exercise rather than just being sedentary.

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