Hi
I know that charlie never really recomended extensive single leg plyo work for safety reasons and the fact that they increase ground contact time, but is that the case for jumpers? is there an exception here, as surely direct bounding on single legs and various take of drills all one legged in nature are a direct method for increasing the shock absorbing ability and force production to take of on one leg.
please can we eloborate
I really don’t know why so many people are against single leg plyos and at the same time they will advocate single squats due to the closer relationship with sprinting/jumping that it has. Is the ground contact really long? Well it is long if you consider 1/100th of a second to be a normal time space but the point it is that single leg plyos ie hopping, are undertaken quickly so no they are not slow and in no way at all increase ground contact time.
The learning curve is drastically longer for single leg plyos than for doing them double legged: For single leg plyos, position, rhythm, timing of the free movers etc. becomes crucial for how fast and powerful the ground contacts turn out to be; for double legged plyos, it’s more a matter of just doing them and tapping into effective contacts in a very short period of time once you get used to them.
The reason for sprinters doing plyos and bounding is somewhat different than for jumpers. For sprinters, sprinting is most important whereas other categories, such as plyos, are secondary, hence the importance of finding the stimulus from them without too much hassle (time spent on learning them). Jumpers might have a similar motive for sprinting; i.e. just getting the speed required on the board (or before the take-off) without spending too much focus on start position, holding max.speed or speed endurance.
Basically it’s a question about what event you do, and subsequent hierarchies of training categories therein. Of course, one legged bounding and jumping is most relevant for jumpers, thus you ought to prioritize them over any other form. However, if you’re just looking for fastest possible ground contact times (without anything else); double legged is the way to go.
@ jumpa,
have you recorded the ground contact times for single leg hopping? Do they relate to sprinting of the individuals you train?
For as far as i know the ground contact times for jumping are longer than for sprinting (rather obvious…).
maybe, if you are (arbitrarily) fast plyo’s can’t give you the stimulus anymore for sprinting (because you are allready doing high speed sprinting, which is powermetric in itself),but still they can give the stimulus for jumping?
Another question, what to aim for during single leg hopping: distance and/or height. I am asking because in normal long/ triple jumping, the body has a lot of intertia due to the speed acquired during run up. Single leg hopping can only be performed at moderate speeds at max (for as far I have seen them: 10 jumps consecutively).
Behind my question: one leg hops in place is rather easy to learn.
Regards,
stefan
as a relatively newcomer wouldn’t single leg work will be slower simply because half the muscles are working.
There might be a positive carryover, but what about a negative one? Might the hops, depth jumps, whatever, be sufficiently similar to the actual event as to create a movement pattern that is detrimental to event performance? Just a thought.
In my experience, it depends on what you are working on.
Depth jumps from a higher box to the ground then immed. to a lower box would be most appropriate for when you are focusing on accel.
Vs.- a low box->ground->to higher box better sutied for MV work.
I hope this makes sense and addresses the question
ok I will still maintain that single leg plyos are very beneficial to the sprinter. The sprinter who is willing to spend the time learning the technical elements of SL plyos will have a distinct advantage over the one that does not. Sprinting itself is a plyometric activity so various forms of plyometrics(given they are conducted well in a well structured program) can only be beneficial. In fact I would even go so far as to say that a sprinter who became competent at plyometrics could go with little to no weight lifting at all within their training program.
Also hopping can be done for many different emphasis. You can do traditional ’ jumper’ style hops which is aiming to increase elasticity, build power etc and has a relatively longer contact time. Then you can put a spin on hops by performing them on the ball of the foot with the arms moving in a sprinting motion. The hopping leg aiming to pick up and put down as fas as possible. Usually performed over 40-60m this exercise will drastically improve the strength & function of the general glute / hip / adductor region as well having the potential to influence sprint mechanics. I will leave it at that for now as I am rambling but as you can tell I am very much for single leg plos in sprinting!