I’ve read and watched some of CF vids about plyos and I’m confused about them.
I’ve first read Coach Francis saying that unilateral plyos are bad because they increase ground contact time (unilateral plyos are similar to sprinting in that they are unilateral, but with much less frequency and longer ground contact time). However, I’ve seen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuCMxAEjlmQ, where athletes do a lot of bounding (even though they’re football players, not sprinters), even unilateral ones.
I’ve read that plyos are too similar to sprinting and thus it competes for similar CNS resources as sprinting; so that he’d only use it during early GPP where only hill acceleration is done or when training environment limits sprint training. Does it mean plyos are nothing but inferior alternative of sprinting? How would one then increase stride length? From what I’ve seen it seems sprinters have longer strides than non sprinters regardless of height and leg length (one example is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZqEj-Qyg6U, where 6’1" Ronaldo has much shorter strides than 5’9" Angel David Rodriguez; even though there’s difference in technique, there must be even more difference in how they apply force with 2.5m vs. 1.7m difference).
In the GPP video I see box jump to high jump pit, and GPP chart shows progrssion to flat hurdle hops and box jumps, then to high box
jumps and depth jumps to hurdle hops. How does these help sprinting? Is it more suitable because it’s less specific to sprinting, as squat
is said to be better than clean for sprinting? (can do higher intensity and volume than unilaterals with less interference with sprinting)
I’ve seen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB9k0FMe1Ok where world class sprinter like Linford Christie does very demanding plyos as well. I wonder if guy like him could’ve been more successful without use of plyos or if some people respond better to more plyos than others.
First of all let me say that reading through Key Concepts repeatedly and reflecting upon its contents has greatly aided my overall understanding of Charlie’s work.
My understanding of the first is that Charlie felt the potential for injury when doing single leg plyometric work (especially depth jumps) far outweighs the potential for gains in reactivity. I believe this is discussed in the Vancouver download, but I will have to verify that- I get some of the Edmonton and Vancouver topics confused. It’s one thing to do single leg hops on the flat, but quite another to do explosive single leg hops up onto / off a box, etc. and I believe that’s what Charlie was cautioning against. The potential upside isn’t that big- yet the potential for injury is serious. For example, last outdoor season one of the members here had an incident with his teenager being asked to do idiotic resisted single leg jumps up onto a box to near failure- of course, she fell onto the box and banged her shin, and it pretty much ruined her outdoor season.
If you look at the graphs showing vertical integration of sprint elements in Key Concepts, it shows that plyo volumes can come back up a bit closer to competition phase when overall sprint volume has dropped (with a corresponding increase in quality). Plyometrics are present at all times, just emphasized more at certain points.
In the GPP there is more of a focus on acceleration development, so the jumps in GPP tend to have more movement around the knee (which is similar to the acceleration phase). When progressing to hurdle hops, this is more focused on Max Velocity mechanics where you have less knee movement and more of an effort to put force downward into the track in a tall position. My understanding of box jumps into a hurdle hop would be to provide some overload as this mimics the tremendous forces being put into the ground by a sprinter when at top speed. You would have to be careful as tolerance to this type of activity is very individual. Many feel these are very effective close to competition (search the archives) as you can get a good results with extremely low volumes. Be aware- this type of activity can be very CNS intensive. Still, it seems a lot safer than the “shock jump” (hit and stick) method proposed by others.
While I am not intimately familiar with Linford Christie’s training program leading up to that particular plyo sequence, he clearly had a pretty serious training background by then and was probably in the 10.00 range when this video was taken. This suggests he has some fairly significant tendons and stable joints. What Christie is doing here is clearly more stressful than bounds. Charlie advocated working everywhere on the force-time curve to expand the overall strength of the athlete. I think plyos can be a useful tool if used judiciously- but that’s a big if! I wouldn’t try this Christie plyo series with my guys, I’m just not that much of a risk-taker.
I let someone borrow my old Detroit Lions workout manuals where Charlie had a major influence on their training. I can’t remember the name for the hops but they did lower intensity single leg hopping - Ange probably could recall some of these drills.
1: Slow guys can handle more plyos.
2: More plyos can be done when the speed/weight intensity is lower (Gpp and Precomp).
3: More plyos can be done in cold climates.
So the athletes in the video didn’t go for maximal exertion with unilateral plyos? like alternate leg bounds, and power skips? I’m guessing it means it’s used more as motor skill development than actual elastic power development?
Is less advanced guys tolerating more plyos because faster guys drain their CNS more from same volume and mode of sprinting, and because faster guys’ sprints have shorter ground contact time, which would be affected negatively by long ground contact time plyos, whereas slower guys sprints will have long ground contact time anyways, so plyo’s detrimental effect of elongating ground contact time won’t be much of problem yet?
In the CF short to long 400m SPP he does have various skips/bounds in the program-skip bounds, straight leg bounds, speed bounds, 2 foot hops, LLRR hops, 2 foot hops with med ball.
Hello. I have a version of short to long and long to short from Edmondton and South Africa, but I’m not sure what the 400m SPP is. The ones I have doesn’t seem to include bounds, although the GPP does include box jumps, hurdle hops, and depth jump to hurdle hops, as well as medicine ball drills like 1-3 hops to throw.
I’d love to know more about the ones that I don’t know yet. Thank you.
There was a PDF in a 400m thread on this site that showed S to L, L to S and speed to spec. end. ratios for each as well as high int. to low int. ratios for each.
For the S to L plan there were various bounds/skips for the first 7 weeks of a 12 program. I don’t recall what the name of the thread was though I’m sure someone will or a search might.
I guess the difference in understanding is in the semantics. I think CF argued against more aggressive single leg plyos like box jumps up / down, as the amount of danger outweighed the amount of improvement you’d see from the activity. There is a big risk differential between relatively innocuous multi-jump type activities such as one foot hops, LLRR hops, and something like single leg box jumps.
I agree 100% with your comments regarding CF’s beliefs on plyos. It was a risk reward point he was making and he was, just as you say, referring not so much to bounding type of exercises but rather, IIRC, the single leg jumps down/one leg hurdle hops ala L. Christie and other similarly intense unilateral jumps. I only brought up CF’s use of bounds/skips because of the above question about him possibly avoiding power skips etc. which we know he did in include in at least one of his written programs. Maybe Ange can comment as well.