Issue 023
March 2007
By Alex Gold. 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 in the ring 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 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 which will be able to reach a higher speed faster.
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.
What are plyometrics?
The word plyometrics in modern day use is actually an inaccurate term. 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 absorption 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?
In articles to follow I will give some examples of commonly used plyometric 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 should first concentrate on the technique of take-off and landing before moving on to advanced drills. It is natural to want to try and progress immediately on to the more advanced and ‘fun’ exercises, but if the movements are done incorrectly you will put a lot of unnecessary stress on the body.
Next month: plyometric exercises to power up your training
