Thanks, Charlie. That was what I was looking for. I think my question is really part of the larger issue of balancing specific versus general training. When I have the time later I’ll start a new thread on that broader topic.
What I’m meaning by my list is that you would say jump over small hurdles, then jump over larger hurdles right afterward. Then add a sand pit or stadium steps.
*Disclaimer - I’m not sure how much it would benefit those training for running events. I personnaly have found it useful for other sports such as football and basketball.
I understand what you’re saying about the volume. My question is, what do you look for in the sprinting that indicates plyos should be added or increased? Why not just rely on the sprinting? Why would I allocate limited energy and adaptive resources to plyometrics rather than additional sprinting volume?
The reason why I’m asking is because I’ve always been a plyometrics skeptic and doubted their necessity, especially when the main training component (in this case sprinting) is inherently plyometric to begin with.
It seems that most people include plyos in their program out of a vague feeling that they should, rather than on the objective needs of the athlete.
Charlie has previously stated (in the archives) that he believes most sprinters will benefit from a small volume (30-40) of plyos. However, I don’t think we’ve ever really discussed what specific observations indicate a need to supplement the sprinting with plyometric training. We know that sprinting itself is plyometric. What I would like to know is what specific factors would you look for that would suggest improvements in coupling will not develop sufficiently through sprinting alone and therefore should be addressed with plyometrics?
The numbers for plyos are very individual and I’ve used examples with very low numbers for fear that readers may ‘run amok’. The numbers for top sprinters often run to 100. It is also difficult to give a figure when the intensity of different plyos can vary so greatly.
At top speed when the body is upright, the impact angle to the ground is mostly vertical, with very little movement about the knee joint during ground contact (ideally). During acceleration, there is more forward lean and greater movement about the knee during ground contact.
I’ve read all I could on this topic from the old forum, although I still don’t really know enough to jump right into it.
I love puns. [Snicker.]
Originally posted by mikeh
I’ve read all I could on this topic from the old forum, although I still don’t really know enough to jump right into it.I love puns. [Snicker.]
Yes, that was the intended effect. 
Can anyone tell me if plyos are suitable for younger athletes? My athlete is 14 and I would like to do some plyos but she has grown quite a lot this past year and Im not sure if they would benefit her or could end up causing damage.
She is strong for her age and is a long jumper.
Could I start with small hurdles and few repetitions?
She should be fine. Just keep things easy. Hopscotch / skipping type stuff. Low hurdles (8" or whatever) should be fine.
I have long felt (and taught) that the concept of plyometrics is often poorly understood and inappropriately applied by track and field coaches and coaches in other sports. My rule of thumb was that if you couldn’t triple jump 40’ (34’ for females) or squat 1.5x body weight I shied away from plyometric work. At what point do you feel an athlete is ready for plyometric work? Is there safe plyometric work for a novice or Junior Olympian?
TJ as a measure would be falsely limiting in that there are very strong people that simply lack those specific skills. Running and jumping (non-plyo specific) are plyometric in effect. Start “Slow & Low” and look for positive adaptations before progressing with the prescription of plyos at any age. Do kids still jump rope? hopscotch? run? and if so, aren’t those examples of safe plyometrics at an early age? With someone young, I would start to build from there. For HS coaches inheriting kids off of a basketball season, those kids have been “plyo-ing” all winter. Do they need time to recover from winter abuses or are they in prime shape and would be disadvantaged by changing over to too much slow / general prep type work?
Where do you use plyometrics in your weekly plan? Do the plyometrics come after weight work or before? On the day of weight work or the day after?
Keeping in mind the plyometric nature of sprinting and jumping, I have used all the above. It depends on the theme of the day / cycle and where we are in-season. I tend to ramp up the volume of all work prior to the holidays as the break is a built in recovery period. I have used weight room complexes with a DL or Squat followed by a plyometric jump(s) done for sets. High amplitude / very low volume plyos for neural activation or shock training.
As a general statement – aside from the obvious rotary motions of the shot, disc and hammer all the events in track and field have a heavy linear emphasis in their execution. I fully realize there are joint or body torques in any movement but I think the average coach ignores the training for dynamic stability in the medial to lateral plane (coronal plane) How do you address this?
Nothing trains a movement in-plane like the movement in-event. But first I’d go back to the point where the athlete enters training and remediate weakness observed before heaping a specific workload on them. At the Lane Symposium a fellow speaker gave a presentation on his athlete’s needing to pass a Functional Movements Assessment, prior to full on training. If they can’t stabilize in the statics, then dynamics / rotationals are more likely to blow them up. If you think back over past years you can see where on an athlete, the dynamic demands of an event has the potential to blow up them up. Follow the anatomy from the manifestation point to the actual weak link looking for cause not result. At the start of each fall assess the quality +/- of the potential weakness areas and remediate prior to piling on dynamic demands.
It has been found that dynamic stability is more a product of endurance (red fibers) than of strength. How do you train these two important qualities that are physiologically at odds with each other?
Isn’t endurance just a different expression of strength? In this case, force manifested as tension? Although there are people who will tell you that isometric is not an expression of strength. I had a self-styled expert recently tell me that “isometrics aren’t really contractions because the muscles neither lengthen nor shorten” No I don’t believe the qualities to be at odds because stabilizers are enablers of movements, not prime movers themselves. No dual purpose of stabilizers so no conflict. However, force results in “unproductive” work when produced in stabilization deficit. Force is co-dependent on stabilization whereas stabilization can be trained in the absence of specific - intended dynamic actions.
Progressive overload is one of the cornerstones of training. How do you quantify plyometric work? Is it by numbers of reps, time of reps or some other method? How do you know when the workout is over? When enough is enough?
Volume, duration, intensity, quality of efforts. Particularly in single leg support, when the quality drop off is noticed that’s a warning sign. Also, the asymmetrical single leg activities, like say LLR, LLR contacts, are more a high-wire act by their nature. Go back to my earlier statement, Start “Slow & Low” and look for positive adaptations before progressing with the prescription of plyos…
This is a broader question regarding overtraining. The “more is better” mantra when applied to plyometric work will rapidly negate any training effect only to produce acute bone, joint or soft tissue injuries. How do you know when enough is enough? You can answer from a single workout perspective or the density of plyometric work in a specified training cycle (i.e. – macro or micro cycle).
Years of mistakes leads to better understanding I guess. Too many people drove kids to an early athletic grave with plyos back in the day. Keep in mind other activities have a plyometric component (eccentric immediately switching to concentric). In that spirit, while plyos have their application, they aren’t something one can simply heap on the body of work without forethought. There is available information that groups plyos into low, medium, high intensities. Progression thru or the combination of these is the art of the game.
How do your plyometric workloads differ from males to females?
In general: Men- less volume, greater amplitude; Women- more volume with lower amplitude. After that it’s less gender specific and more strength / training age / health specific. In defense of the ladies, I had a female jumper here (went on medal in the slalom at 2001 Skiing WC for Norway) who was a rock. You couldn’t break her if you tried. My wife also built up her strength levels to where she could handle heavier plyo loading than some of my guys. To that end, improvement to one’s max strength, functional hypertrophy, etc, provide greater resources to work with. People are caught up with working with percentages. How about giving more consideration to raising their 100th percentile to improve their 75th?
Most females have a larger quadriceps angle (Q angle) than men that posturally presents with an increased valgus (shin out) stress at the knee. How do you deal with this fact with your female athletes?
I worry more about this in the squat rack when I see toe-ing in. I speak to proper positioning and technique as well as have shifted to prescribing less squatting / loading of the spine, and more posterior chain work. One benefit is also a better balance between quad and hamstrings in deep knee angles. More plyo-specific, the concern I have for women is around possible joint laxity and potential for injury. I am very careful with single leg contacts and over-jumping in the event specific area. Someone did a study on NCAA women and their knee injury occurrence and if I recall, they suggested that women may be more susceptible to ACL injury around days 10 –14?
Leg drills can be done with double or single support. I once watched Tom Tellez’s Houston athletes do a plyometric hurdle workout – all double support (two footed landings). When I asked Coach Tellez why they only did double support he stated simply, “It’s safer.” How do you break things up?
Safer, but there are no sprint or jump events with two footed contacts. He may have felt that his athletes got plenty of single leg plyo work from normal running and jumping.
Do you do much box work? At what point in the season? How high are the boxes? What would be a sample workout? Do they land double or single support? Do they rebound or “stick the landing?”I am a proponent of landings, but the strength and training age of the athlete is important, particularly if single leg landings. However landings are not plyometric as there is no concentric rebound.
You cannot run fast, jump or throw far unless you have a strong foot. How do you prepare the foot for the stresses of plyometrics? Do you do anything special for other “at risk” joint complexes? (i.e. – wrist, shoulder, knee, low back)
I have prescribed sand work, towel - toe grabs and similar in the past but mostly I use a slow build-up of volume and intensity along with using sections of rollout rubber runway to moderate impacts as needed.
One of the limiting factors in improved performance is eccentric strength. Certainly one of the benefits of plyometrics is the development of eccentric strength. Are there any special exercises or drills you use (med balls, boxes, weights, etc.) that focuses on this critical factor?Depth landings are eccentric specific work. Squatting with slow downward tempos is a great non-plyo exercise. It can get you great results in the weight room because the athlete’s lifting prior to coming to you has most often been fast down / fast up with no regard for the primacy of the eccentric action. Slow, down-tempos or paused squats will be lesser than the athlete’s squat PR but in time they lead to breaking plateaus and their events benefit as well. Speaking to plyos, the goal of a stretch shorten cycle is to create and leverage muscle tension (lengthening and shortening) so there is much to be gained by detraining the level of neural / Golgi inhibition.
Coachmdd,
are those your views or is it taken from elsewhere? 
the idea that if an athlete should be able to squat 1.5 times their bodyweight is a joke simply because the forces expereinced during a plyometric are usually many times greater than a person squat ability. so it makes little difference if u can squat this or that becasue of the great disperity in both force and motor control patterns. depth landings (not a true plyometric i know) can produce a force upwards of 20 times the individuals body weith from heights of 3.2 m. this force is directly proportional to the square of the velocity upon impact so the greater the height of the fall the greater the subsequent force. maybe in a few thousands year humans and athletics will evolve to the point where athletes have to do depth landings in a vacume to negate the effect of wind resitance and therby surpas terminal velocity… wishful thinking maybe. but it ouwl be amazing to see a 3 second 100m dash lol
mine in response to a questioner…
Ok thanks
1 more question, would bounding be ok? I only thought of this after I got the last answers!
The athlete in question has a training age of 4.5 years.