S B Coaches College - Tip of the Month July 2007




		S B Coaches College Tip of the Month July 2007

Plyometric training is one way to bridge the gap between the slow strength training program and the explosive, elastic contractions used in sport. It is essentially speed – strength training, with the load fairly constant (bodyweight, if the box height doesn’t change) and the training stimulus being speed of movement and volume (sets times reps). Several years ago I was talking to some of the coaches at Nebraska, Mike Arthur and Brian Bailey and they had instituted a concept with their football linemen and bigger athletes. Instead of a lot of traditional plyometrics, they implemented more agility training due to the size of the athlete. They quantified the plyo’s by sets, reps and foot contacts and the agilities by sets and reps in order to keep track of training loads and volumes. I thought this was an outstanding concept.

Since plyometrics are from track and field, which is a predominantly linear sport, they tend to develop speed and acceleration linearly. Agilities are traditionally rooted in court/field sports that involve change of direction speed and acceleration. Garret Giemont, the NFL and MLB strength coach organizes his agilities into speed angles and shuttles. Angles being the square drill, the L drill, etc. which tend to conserve speed through the angles of the cuts. These drills tend to be less demanding than the shuttle type drills (the 5 – 10 – 5 20 yard short shuttle, the W drill) that require the athlete to change direction and come back down a line that is almost 180 degrees opposite of the one they were originally on.

Implementing these two concepts into the training program can elevate the return on training experienced by your athletes and clients. Couple this with Mike Boyle’s concept of a lateral day alternated with a linear day and experience even better training results.

The plyometric training progression is landing first emphasizing a “soft” bend at the hip – knee – ankle in order to absorb force. This is followed by simple drills such as low box jump – ups and jump downs, emphasizing soft landings. In- season, I recommend only doing the jump up portion of the box jump and use slow strength training to develop the eccentric loading phase. In the off – season I implement cone and hurdle jumps and for the lighter athletes cone and hurdle hops (one foot), linearly and laterally. The heavier athletes (football linemen) do more agility reps and the lighter athletes do more plyometric reps. Technique and landing mechanics outweigh the importance of jump and box height. In the total program, time – wise or rep wise, plyo’s only comprise a small share of the training emphasis. I utilize more agility training for change of direction (lateral) training and plyometrics for linear acceleration development. The ability to maintain speed through a cut or change of direction while maintaining a low athletic position is much more important than the ability to generate speed linearly for non-track athletes. If the athlete is tremendously deficient in elastic/reactive strength, I will prescribe plyometrics to develop elastic speed - strength in our athletes and clients more than to enhance their ability to accelerate or develop speed.