ARTICLE: A Beginner's Guide To Plyometrics

A Beginners Guide to Plyometrics

An aspect of performance enhancement that is often overlooked is something called plyometric training. While athletes, especially those who are self-coached, often spend lots of time in the gym training with weights to develop strength and size, the ability to apply the strength and power gained in the gym to the on-field, in-ring or on-court game is regularly overlooked.

Who needs plyometrics?

Plyometrics can and should be used by anyone requiring great speed, agility and explosive power. An athlete can be the strongest in the world, but may still get beaten if another is faster. Even if an athlete is fast, unless they are able to explosively produce that speed it becomes worthless. When analysing most sports, it becomes clear that being able to explosively start and stop is more important than reaching top speed. Consider two racing cars going round a twisting turning track with very short straights. The car that has the highest top speed will not necessarily win, as it may not be able to display this speed, contrasted with the car with great acceleration and braking which will be able to reach a higher speed faster. This type of twisting movement with very little pure straight line movement is common in most sports, running events excluded!

As a side note, there is a common misconception that people without a double bodyweight squat should not train plyometrics. This is actually a misinterpretation of an old soviet text that recommended that athletes that have not achieved a double bodyweight squat should avoid the extremely advanced reactive drills such as high depth jumps due to the very high toll on the body. In most cases plyometrics can be performed no matter what the athlete’s strength level, as long as the difficulty of the drill is correctly prescribed. Athletes with major imbalances or injuries should of course proceed with extreme caution, however.

What are plyometrics?

The word plyometrics in modern day use is actually an inaccurate term in many cases. The term has become used for all jumping, landing and bounding type exercises when in fact many are not plyometrics in the true scientific sense of the word. A true plyometric exercise is intended to train the amortisation or ‘shock absorbing’ qualities of the muscles and tendons. Examples of this are exercises like the hurdle hop, depth jumps, power skipping etc. All these exercises train the stretch-shortening cycle to become more efficient, with the goal being to spend as little time as possible in contact with the ground and produce the maximum possible power. Exercises that are not purely plyometric but have been grouped on with plyometrics for the sake of convenience are exercises that develop rate of force development and force absorbtion separately, such as box jumps and altitude drops. For the sake of this article I will refer to all jumping, bounding,
throwing and landing drills as plyometrics, but be aware of the different qualities these drills will train.

How do you train plyometrics?

First I will give some examples of commonly used plyometric style drills, with a sensible progression from easy to difficult, then examine how to implement them into a training program.

Before beginning plyometric training, an athlete should be injury free and at a respectable level of relative strength. They should be able to easily manipulate their bodyweight in exercises such as squats, lunges, press-ups etc. If an athlete is unable to perform this type of movement almost effortlessly, attempts at plyometric training will be futile and demoralising. Training should be centred on increasing relative strength until the athlete is ready to perform plyometric drills.

If the athlete is sufficiently prepared to begin plyometric training, he/she should first concentrate on the technique of take-off and landing before moving on to more advanced drills. It is natural to want to try and progress immediately on to the more advanced and ‘fun’ drills, but if the movements are done incorrectly you will put a lot of stress on the body unnecessarily. The basic fundamentals of a good landing are to have the hips back, the knees pushed out so the shins are vertical and to land on the toes first. This way the shock of the landing will be transferred through the ankles, hips and knees and be absorbed by the muscles rather than the joints.

The exercises below are arranged in order, first teaching jumping mechanics, then landing mechanics, then moving on to more complex movements.

Basic Exercises

Box Jump:

This exercise will teach explosion from the floor. Stand in front of a box at the desired height. Dip slightly, then explode onto the box. Drive with the legs and swing the arms up and forwards for more momentum. As with all plyometric style exercises the landing should be as quiet as possible, as noise means that energy has been lost. Many people try to raise the height of the box at the expense of form. A good rule of thumb to go by is that the squat position on landing should be no deeper than the depth of the dip performed before the jump. This ensures you are actually jumping higher, rather than just pulling the knees up and landing in a tucked position.



Hurdle Jump:

This exercise is similar to the box jump, but involves jumping over a hurdle. Try to land on the toes as quietly as possible with good balance (imagine a gymnast landing at the end of a routine). This is commonly referred to as ‘sticking’ the landing. Once the hurdle jump and landing are perfected, multiple hurdles can be placed in a row with a short contact in between each.

Power Skip:

This is a basic exercise which can be used specifically as a plyometric drill or as the latter part of a warm-up sequence. It involves skipping, but with a powerful drive off the floor, swinging the arms vigorously with an upward drive of the knee

Standing Long Jump:

This exercise is fairly self-explanatory. From a standing position, dip and pull the arms back then explode forwards, swinging the arms at the same time in order to jump forwards as far as possible. Again, once the jump and landing have been perfected, this drill can be performed with multiple reps.

Lateral Box Jump:

This drill is the same as the box jump, except that instead of standing in front of the box you stand to one side. Explode upwards and sideways and stick the landing, then step down to the opposite side. The height of box you can use for this drill is much less than the standard box jump height. As you progress you may also want to try this exercise with one leg. I would suggest an even lower box for this variation, and if landing on the leg used to take-off land on the box, alternatively you can jump right over the box and land on the opposite leg on the other side.

Standing Vertical Leap:
From a standing position, dip into a shallow squat position then drive up with the legs, using the arms for extra drive, and jump as high as possible. This is exactly the same as the box jump, except there is no box to land on. This is a good test of explosive ability which is very easy to do. The easiest way to test is to chalk the fingertips (or hold some chalk in the hand), stand next to a wall and with the arm outstretched overhead, make a mark. Now perform the vertical leap, and at the highest position touch the wall to make another mark. The difference between the two marks is your result. This is a great way to track progress, and harder to cheat than for instance a box jump.



Altitude Drops:

This is the opposite to a box jump. Start standing on a box, jump off and stick the landing. The aim as always is to minimise the noise on landing and land with great stability and proper mechanics. Caution should be taken with raising the box much above the maximum vertical jump height.

Hurdle/Box Jump (1 leg variations):

Both the hurdle and the box jump can be performed with only one leg. This will not only challenge the explosive capabilities of the athlete, but also tax the balance more upon landing.

Depth Jump:

If you combine the altitude drop and the vertical leap, you get the depth jump. This involves jumping from a box to the floor, and upon landing immediately exploding up into a vertical leap. If you have good reactive ability you should be able to jump higher using this technique than from a standing start due to the extra potential energy that is stored in and released from your muscles and tendons. When you are comfortable with this drill you can start using more complex variations, for example dropping from a mid sized box onto the ground then onto a high box equal to or higher than your best box jump.

The progression for upper body push exercises I recommend is the same as that of the box jump – first learn to explode, then to land, and then combine the two. For all push-up variations, remember that it is possible to make the exercise more difficult by elevating the feet, or for very strong athletes, adding a weighted vest while performing the exercise.

Explosive Press-Up:

Perform a normal press-up with hands just outside shoulders and elbows tucked to around sixty degrees, but try and explode so that the hands come off the ground. If you are capable of doing this comfortably, move on to the next stage.

Explosive Push-Up to Blocks:

Set up 2 blocks, aerobic steps or similar just outside of shoulder width. Perform the explosive press-up as before, and land on the blocks. Move the hands back to the start position and repeat.




Drop and catch:

This is an exercise to practise the landing from the blocks used previously. Landing on the hands can be painful to the wrists, so it is best to accustom them to the stress by splitting the plyometric push-up into two parts at first. This ensures you can concentrate on proper landing mechanics without having to worry about the explosion onto the blocks. Perform this exercise by starting on the blocks, pushing off lightly, moving the hands in and landing in the press-up position previously practised. Once this drill and the previous one are able to be performed comfortably, move on to the next stage.

Depth Push-up:

This is the combination of the previous two drills. Press-up, land on blocks, drop from blocks and explode back.



There are many other plyometric exercises that there is not room to list, but if you perform the exercises above you will get a good idea of what plyometric training consists of and can use this to come up with your own ideas.

How to insert plyometrics into the overall program:

Now you know what exercises to do, when do you do them and how many sets and reps? This is a question to which there is no definitive answer, but I will attempt to give some general guidelines you can use to adapt your current program to include plyometrics.

When starting with plyometric drills, less is definitely more. The goal should be to perform every repetition with perfect form, rather than do a huge volume incorrectly. Bear in mind that plyometric drills take a great toll on the central nervous system (CNS), due to the fact you are using close to 100% of your available muscle fibres in the working muscles. Research advises us to limit even advanced athletes to a maximum of 150 ‘foot contacts’ per week. One ‘foot contact’ is a landing from a depth jump, standing long jump etc. Beginners are recommended not to exceed 50 contacts a week, although I often limit this to 30. Recommendations for upper body work vary, but I would normally only give this half the amount of training the lower body receives. Once you have implemented plyometrics into your routine, you can then evaluate the volume that you are able to handle.

Plyometric drills are by their nature fast and explosive, therefore we will be using the fast-twitch fibres predominantly. These muscle fibres tire quickly, as does the energy system that supplies them. Therefore I would recommend 1-5 rep sets for most plyometric drills, going up to a maximum of 10 reps in some circumstances. This will allow the body to remain explosive and prevent bad technique due to fatigue.

Due to the requirement to be fresh and the technical nature of plyometric drills it is recommended to perform them first if you are combining weight training and plyometric training.

If working off the recommendation of 30 contacts per week, with a recommended rep range of 5 at maximum, we have 6 sets. Most beginners will find it easiest to perform 3 sets of 5 twice a week. Once accustomed to this it can be extended to 5 sets, then another exercise can be added each day and 3 sets of each can be performed etc. Here are some sample program ideas:

Beginner:
Day 1
Day 2
Box Jump (3x5) Lateral Box Jump (3x5)

Intermediate:
Day 1
Day 2
Power Skip (3x10) Standing Long Jump (3x5)
Depth Jump (3x5) Lateral Box Jump(3x5)

Advanced:
Day 1
Day 2
Depth Jump (5x5) Hurdle Hops(5x10)
Jump Lunge (5x5) One leg lateral jump (5x5)


I hope this article has given you some ideas on the concept of plyometric training and how to include it in your training program. Remember that in sports it is not always the strongest or the fastest that wins, but if you can maximise your strength and speed you will greatly improve your performance most of the time. Until next time, keep training hard!

Alex Gold is a trainer and therapist specialising in working with sportsmen to increase performance. He can be contacted on 07931 561 807 or via his website, www.hardcoresportstraining.co.uk