Plyometrics
Since you’re reading this, I’m guessing you want to jump higher, increase your speed and strength. If you said yes, well you’ve come to the right place. What is plyometrics you ask? Plyometrics is just a name for exercises where the muscle is essentially, loaded before it’s contracted. An example is a depth jump, one of the most popular exercises for jumping higher. You stand on an elevated surface, step off and as soon as your toes hit the ground you explode up. Notice how when you step off and touch the ground, your muscles are loaded? And then when you explode off the ground they contract? That’s what a plyometric exercise is, in a simple man’s term though.
So you must be asking yourself, is plyometrics really effective? The answer is yes. Plyometrics is one of the top ways, if not the greatest way to improve the power in your body. Plyometrics is used by many developing athletes in many sports and is the greatest utilized training method in basketball and volleyball because you need to jump high of course, whether to rebound, dunk or to spike the volleyball. Many studies have shown that plyometrics can easily, yes easily improve performance is long jumping, sprinting, vertical jumping and more!
Plyometrics exercises
Here are some examples of plyometric exercises;
Plyometrics exercises to jump higher
Depth Jumps; the bread and butter of plyometrics to jump high. The exercise is plain and simple; get a box, stand on top of the box, step of the box, as soon as you come into contact with the ground, jump up as high as you can.
Technical aspects; box height; to find the correct box height you need to first measure your vertical leap. You can learn how to reading and watching this; . After you find your vertical jump, you want to get a box around knee height, step off it, jump as high as you can and record your vertical leap again. You want to raise the box an inch and do it again until you find the peak in your jump. For example, I just 35 inches in the air without a box. I get a box and put the box at 21 inches, I jump 34 inches. Then I put the box at 22 inches and I jump 36 inches. I then put the box at 23 inches and I jump 35 inches. As you can see, when the box is at 22 inches in height I jump the highest, so that is the height of the box I would want to use.
Rim Jumps; This one’s easy; Find a basketball hoop somewhere, stand directly under it and jump up touching any bit of the rim which you can; net, rim or backboard. After landing again, you want to quickly explode back up and touch the part you can with your alternate hand. Try to minimize the time you are on the ground and maximize the explosiveness you use.
Plyometric exercises to run faster
Hill sprints; The best exercise to increase your acceleration when sprinting. Because you are running on an upwards angle, it forces your body to the ground more heavily which mimics the acceleration phase of a sprint. Simply find a hill, not to steep or not to flat. You want to run up the hill, walk back down, rinse and repeat.
Zig Zags; Find a rope or line. Stand with your feet together on the left side of the lined object. The aim is to jump to the right side of the lined object as quickly as possible. As soon as you hit the right side, explode to the side back to the left, rise and repeat.
So to conclude; Plyometrics is one of the best tools an athlete can use to increase their explosion. It’s been around only in the last century and was used by Russian coaches to train Olympians. So get out there and start doing plyometrics, you’ll be dunking in no time!
