Plyometrics, or “jump training”, is a huge piece of the athletic development puzzle that many coaches miss out on with their players/athletes. When I work with athletes either at the youth or college level, the first thing I do when it comes to plyometric training is to work on establishing a good landing position. This is the building block to all the more advanced, complex, intricate, & ‘sexy’ drills you’ll see flooding the Instagram fitness world.
The first order of business should be to teach your players/athletes to “put the brakes on” or absorb force. This is important because when you look at where most injuries come from during the jumping cycle, it is actually during the landing phase. Rarely do you see someone get hurt when they are actually jumping.
You need brakes!
Is starting here boring? Maybe. Important? Absolutely!
When someone doesn’t have the ability to land properly during the jumping action, they are at an increased risk or acute and/or chronic injury. If you’re a higher-level athlete like college or pro, this could mean a lengthy time on the sideline & a long road to recovery. For youth athletes, this may mean having to spend valuable developmental time spent in recovery.
Not only are athletes at an increased risk of injury when they haven’t properly developed the skill of landing, they are also missing out on the chance to increase their athletic qualities.
Unfortunately, too many coaches like to breakout the hurdles & have their players/athletes do some sloppy jumps over them. Or they’ll have their players/athletes jumping up the bleachers at a local highschool stadium because they saw some beast of a pro athlete training like this. As a coach, you’ve got to start from the ground up & work on developing this skill properly. Otherwise, you’re not helping your players/athletes at all, you’re actually doing more harm than good.
When helping you players/athletes learn how to properly jump, there are simple steps to break down any jump to ensure they are executing each rep efficiently.
Another reason why plyometric training is a huge piece of the athletic development puzzle is because there is direct correlation to becoming faster. This is because the force you have to produce when doing plyometrics is similar to the production of force required when sprinting.
So how do you go about coaching & teaching jump training?
Stage #1: Landing technique
Learning to absorb force and ensuring proper alignment with the ankle, knee, and hip is great for injury prevention. Correcting these problems will help the athlete avoid serious landing injuries. Exercises that may be utilized to improve landings include:
Snapdowns: starting in a standing position, drop down into a squat-like position with your arms back.
Stage #2: Jumping with a landing “stick”
Learning to jump and “stick” a landing is the next thing that I teach. Once the athlete knows the positioning I want them to be in, I actually challenge them to jump & find that position on the landing. I also like to use smaller hurdles to have them move gradually forwards. Box jumps are also a great progression here as it challenges the athlete to jump & makes the landing a bit easier as it takes more gravity out of the equation, making it more friendly on their tendons. I avoid repetitive jumping in this phase and work on power development and absorption so as to introduce the tendons to this motion & develop eccentric strength to avoid chronic issues like tendonitis.
Box jumps:
Snapdown + jump & stick:
Stage #3: Jumping with a double-bounce
After the previous two phases are complete, we then introduce some repetitive jumping. The goal is to do this in a controlled manner, and generally start with lower hurdles to introduce the tendons to more explosive movements without increasing the demands too high too quick. The athlete will jump and land, do a double-boune/mini-hop in place, then repeat the jump.
This increased elastic demand helps teach the athlete to react and work on the athlete’s stretch shortening cycle, which is a key to power production.
Hurdle hops w/ double-bounce:
Stage #4: Continuous Jumping
This rapid absorption & production of force is when true plyometrics take place. Repetitive jumping is a great way to further increase the demands on the stretch shortening cycle and challenge the reactivity of the athlete. Repetitive jumping combines the beginning phase of teaching a landing then immediately reproducing force to execute a jump
I typically use hurdles, but doing repetitive snapdowns + jumps is a great variation if you have equipment or time constraints.
Hurdle Hops continuous:
Repetitive Snapdowns + jumps:
Stage #5: Single-leg jumping
Single leg training is crucial for overall performance in any sport and most importantly injury reduction/prevention. Once your athletes/players can demonstrate good bilateral jumping, you can and should incorporate single-leg jump training using the same progressions as mentioned above. Single leg jump training should not be ignored as it allows the opportunity to be flexible with modalities such as boxes, hurdles, and even just a line on the floor.
First, establish the ability to land & jump in the sagittal plane (forward & backward), then work laterally (away from the mid-line) & medially (toward the mid-line) in the frontal plane (side to side), before progressing to diagonal single leg hopping as sports are played at all different types of angles. The same can be said about bilateral variations
Single leg jumping progressions:
- Single leg hurdle hops with a stick
- Medial & lateral single leg hurdle hops
- Single leg hurdle hops continuous
There are other ways to incorporate plyometric training, but I have found the above progressions to be a basic and foundational rendition of how jumping should be taught in an individual or team environment. From simple to complex, plyometrics are a great training tool for all athletes when the coach understands how and when to progress or regress the training variation appropriately based upon the athlete’s developmental level and abilities.
Jumping progressions with no equipment: You can use these same progressions bilaterally and unilaterally
Hurdle Hop Jumping Progressions:
In my most recent Instagram post, I show how I progress athletes through these jumping progressions during their preseason. Check it out & see what you think.
If you or an athlete you know is looking to increase their athletic abilities, contact me via email dhogancoaching@gmail.com to find out if online training is right for you.
