I’m between 215-220 on any given day right now. At this kind of weight is there some kind of special care that should be taken with plyos? I’m already very explosive but I’ve added a lot of mass over the last year so I’m not sure if I should be avoiding certain things or being very careful with others.
Depth jumps are the ones I’m most curious about, since I feel like the impulse there is most likely to be dangerous
What’s the goal? Everything is risk vs reward, so to me it depends what you want to get out of the plyos.
Are you conditioned to them? That’s also very relevant. Like if you’re 40 and haven’t jumped since 8th grade is different than if you’re 28 and were in the NFL until last year.
Oh I do a lot of sprinting, I’ve been trying to gain strength this year to improve general power production but I haven’t done real plyo work since I became this heavy. Lots of direct sprinting though.
Goal is just increase power to increase speed
Like for track?
In any case, I’d just start working my way through a progression. It would be a long time before you need/ get to depth jumps. Off the top of my head, in terms of impact/ stage of advancement, the progressions would be:
I probably wouldn’t really progress your volume (number of contacts), and I’d keep them pretty minimal. There’s all types of guides on this, but let’s say 18-30 max ground contacts (I think 30 is actually pretty high) a week… especially since this sounds like this is of secondary importance and you’re primarily worried about the effect on a heavier body.
The learned men say to squat double body-weight before you mess with depth jumps. I remember that because it was pretty controversial a few years back.
And maybe if you’re big don’t go over 2/3 of a meter in height?
here’s a cool diagram from the Father of Plyometrics.
and a Bonus
These look amazing but they’re coming through ultra-low resolution. Is there any way you can get these through at a better res or via a link so they’re readable?
Sorry to be asking for annoying technical stuff, I just can’t make out the text
I’m having trouble finding a clearer version of the little chart with the sets/reps/percentages.
This info comes from Yuri Verkhoshansky. His website is Verkhoshansky dot com. You should be able to find the charts (and tons more info) in a a PDF over there.
I’m just commenting as a reminder to come back and post my thoughts when I’ve got a bit more time
The Russian stuff is great, but there have been advancements in our understanding of plyo training since the Supertraining era, mostly around how to scale and select plyos
I look forward to this–everything I thought I knew about plyos echoes what @TrainForPain wrote above.
Lately, though, I’ve seen recommendations to include plyos in training programs written for aging lifters, e.g., me. Do you see any benefit?
I’m interested in @j4gga2’s response, which will definitely be more informed than mine, but I absolutely see a benefit. Talk about the first thing to go! I move like molasses in winter. I think more of my time should be spent actually moving quickly.
Before a purist destroys me, I understand explosive movement is not synonymous with plyometrics. We’re all uninitiated here, though, so I think we can at least categorize the broad concepts together.
The best way to improve sprinting peformance is specific work on acceleration and max v work. Intensity of sessions combined with rest - obviously. Plyos are a supplementary method. All supplementaries take time, energy and focus away from the primary work.
Tony Holler has some basic drills and plyos along with their recommended volumes. They tend to focus on simpler bounding type moves rather than box jumps. But they dont look funky in the gym.
Has your extra mass, I hope mostly muscle, improved your sprinting ? It is a power to weight thing.
With all due respect to this site are are you researching on sprinting web sites ? I would not try to improve my lifting or body composition reading articles by Clyde Hart (for example).
Key points
1 - What is plyo training
Plyometric training is a vague term, and is usually used to describe two completely different types of training as if they were the same.
When we zoom in on the muscle-tendon unit (MTU) and how it behaves under high speeds and high forces, we see relatively binary behaviour.
When more time is available, and more concentric “pushing” is required, lengthening and shortening across the joint/MTU predominantly takes place through length change of the muscular tissue. We’ll see this when the organism has more than >200ms to produce force.
When less time is available, and more elastic “pop” is required, the overall excursion at the joint will reduce, and will predominantly take place through deformation of the elastic structures within the MTU (tendon, titin filament, fascia). This is literally how a movement becomes “elastic”. Elastic MTU behaviour can only take place when muscle behaviour is isometric, and will be expressed when the system has <200ms to produce its force.
For context, here are some rough averages of the time available to produce force in a series of tasks:
True plyometric training aims to overload the elastic strategy, and therefore has the following qualities
Fast training that fails to meet this criteria is not plyo training, but can be thought of as “power training”. Power training generally seeks to maximise the eccentric rate of force development of the involved muscles.
2 - Monitoring Plyometric Intensity
When we look at models to describe sprint running, we find that the vertical forces produced in running can be modelled by 1) the vertical forces produced by the foot, ankle and shin, and 2) the vertical forces produced by the remainder of the body. Considering sprinting is the most “natural” form of plyometric, we can extrapolate this to safe that the intensity in plyometrics is mostly moderated by:
The reason we use momentum instead of speed is because momentum includes mass, so this way allows us to consider how weighting plyos affects their intensity.
Using momentum, we know that the change in momentum into the jump vs the momentum out of the jump (mass x takeoff velocity) is equal to the jump impulse. If we divide the jump impulse by the ground contact time, we have the ground reaction force.
Therefore, more intense plyometrics will have
3 - Scaling Plyometric Training
When we combine the above with the knowledge that we must always preserve very short ground contact times to maintain elastic states, we can then deduce that we scale plyos based on impact velocity on takeoff velocity. We can also change between double and single leg (where single leg is more intense)
This is how we create our “scale” of plyo intensity
So basically, we go from light to moderate to intensive “effort”, and we go from double-leg to alternating to single-leg.
Please note that athletes who are not sufficiently “springy” WILL NOT be able to perform “true” plyometric behaviour (contact time <200ms) beyond a certain level, no matter how hard they try. Kind of like heavy lifting, “you’ve got what you’ve got” until you develop further
4 - Programming Plyos
So now it’s really easy to program our plyos.
Low intensity plyometrics can be performed up to 6 times per week, 150-500 contacts per session
Medium intensity plyometrics can be performed 2-4 times per week, 60-100 contacts per session
Intensive plyometrics can be performed 1-3 times per week, 15-50 contacts per session
Where:
Because the real overload here comes from the entry momentum, ground contact and exit momentum, you can introduce as much variation as you want. However, the more you move outside the sagittal plan, the less intensity you can create. Hence, Lighter and medium intensity plyos can be extremely multi-directional, whilst more intensive plyometrics should focus more on vertical and forwards
Yes but ankle stiffness explains 45% of the performance in both acceleration and maximum velocity. Moreover, sprint velocity is primarily determined by an athletes ability to produce a sufficient vertical impulse in increasingly short contact times
Hence, short contact training clearly has a role in improving sprint performance. For athletes who might struggle achieving sufficient volumes of short contacts from intense sprinting (lest they pop a Hammie), plyos are a good developmental tool
I love this, I guess the most obvious question would be does the contact total include the contacts I get while actually sprinting? I’m not sure the exact numbers but iirc 100m will put me at 50 contacts, if I ran 2x100m a couple times in one week would I subtract 200 from the number? Or is proper plyo training only to be done in blocks when you’re not also sprinting?
Sprinting is a form of plyometric training, but don’t count it as such. Your plyo training is supplemental
You can do both plyos and sprinting at the same block as well. Typically, plyos can be a good way to warm up for your sprint work
That was awesome. It’s a lot more contacts than I’d have thought, but I’m also trying to remember back more than 20 years and different coaches/ seasons.
I think the low intensity contact numbers do seem really high, but when you think about training “traditions” it’s still pretty chill
For example, Boxers will regularly bust out 5-10min of jump rope like it’s no big deal. That’s easily up into the 1000s of low intensity plyo contacts
Very good point. We’d jump rope for like 45 minutes when I was wrestling, but my brain doesn’t really put it in the same category as the “efforts” we’d put in for track.
If you care to keep exploring this topic, to @barley1’s point, where would you spend training time for the aging weekend warrior who just wants to move slightly faster than molasses whilst looking awesome-er?
I think it depends on their current level of preparation. In general we want to:
If you’re including speed training (not essential), you’ll usually either stack speed days with lower body days (if possible), or do a lower volume of speed work the day after strength training. This leaves the following “popular” options
Regardless of whether or not you do speed training, the following applies to plyos:
I currently lean towards two full body strength sessions, two track/sprint sessions and two aerobic sessions (swimming right now, because it’s the middle of Aussie summer). I like this because I enjoy the “athletic” stuff more than the strength stuff. With this format, low-intensity plyos could be included every session, moderate intensity plyos on the strength and track days, and high intensity plyos on the speed days only
About four years ago, after a deadlifting session, I jumped and grabbed a basketball rim on a playground. I was 42. That’s the last time I was able to do so.
Last year, at 45, I raced my kid in a 100 meter sprint. I thought I was toying with him, got ready to kick it into top gear, but quickly realized that gear no longer existed.
I’d like to recover as much of that ability as I can.
The longevity programs I own include a lot of lifting and cardio, plus each week:
-three sets of five jumps increasing in intensity every four-week block
-three sets of five pushups with a clap, progressing from pushing off a bench, to the floor, to dropping into the pushup position from a height of a few inches
-three 35 meter sprints that progress adding a vest, then a sled.
Does this seem a reasonable progression to you, @j4gga2 , a way for a middle-aged weekend warrior to regain some of his former athletic glory? Is it enough?
And, again, it’s cool af that you’re here helping not only athletes, but at least one broken down old dude.
