Does mixing heavy squats with plyometrics bad when increasing my vertical jump?

Would doing lots of regular squats be equivalent to doing jump squats????????????????????????…

• i want to be stronger for my next erg test, so i want to do workouts at home. i know jump squats are good, but they make too much noise...so could i just do regular squats? if i normally do 150 jumps squats, how many regular squats should i do?

• Answer:

  To get the same sort of benefits you would need to be doing weighted squats (say 20kg minimum, at a guess) you would also need to do them slowly, count for 2 up and 4 down. However, this will not improve the explosive performance like jump squats will. The improvements you do get will depend on the number of reps you do. As you want endurance, for an erg test (that's rowing yeh?) so high reps are wanted. If you are doing 150 jumping squats try and do 150 weighted squats. Reps this high may mean you can only do it with 10kg or something. You don't want reps to decrease really as low reps will improve muscular strength, and middle reps will increase muscle size. (150 is insane though, unless that's what your instructor said or people advised you to do. If I was writing a program for endurance the max I would give would be two sets of 30 reps with a 30 seconds break, and each set performed to failure, but your sports coach, or the guy above me, will know better for rowing.) Even If you don't have weights, hold a bag of potatoes across your shoulder blades or put on a heavy rucksack, anything to make your legs work more than they have to normally will help, and the rate is important, remember, 2 up, 4 down. The slower you do them the more quickly you will fatigue, however again a very slow rate may mean more strength and growth gains than endurance. FYI: The 5 ways to increase the difficulty of an exercise are: Reps (increase/decrease depending on goals) Rate (speed the movement is done at, slower is harder) Resistance (increase weight) Rest (decrease) Range (of movement) (increase) So you need to find a way to make regular squats do the same as jumping squats Also, what about walking lunges? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYTNEh4r5PI&feature=fvst And you could isolate, combine lunges, with heel raises. Those can be done at home. If you can get to a gym, leg curls, leg extensions, leg press blah blah blah Course the best way to improve your rowing steadily and in all areas, is to row more.