Incorporating Leg Hops

[RB34]

You are correct, if they are anything like Ange demo on the Detroit Lions video then they are tiny ankle bounds aka reactive ankle hops.

@Flash

Charlie’s preference was for double leg jumps. All plyos/hops are general by definition, and switching from double leg to single leg dramatically increases injury risk in the mistaken pursuit of marginal increases in specificity that are not really necessary. If you read and watch Charlie’s body of material you will hear this warning again and again. It wasn’t a one-time obscure comment from him. More importantly, it simply makes sense (which is the main value of Charlie’s approach to training).

The problem with looking at that one reference in the CFTS manual is that there is no context to it, and we don’t know exactly what those hops looked like during execution. I have a feeling they were not large dramatic bounds. They might very well have been tiny little hops. We simply don’t know. What was the skill level of the athlete in those kinds of exercises? What was the fatigue state at the time of the hops? What work had been done prior to or after? Looking at a training diary entry without knowing the answers to contextual questions like these is of no value, which is why Charlie was always hesitant to list specific workouts, whether hypothetical or specific historical examples.

Whenever you see an isolated example in Charlie’s material (or any coach’s for that matter) that appears to contradict the general principles he espoused at length elsewhere, a red flag should go up that there are probably a lot of circumstantial details missing from the picture, which is giving you a false superficial impression.