What are Plyometrics?
Overview
Plyometrics is a term that you may have heard when it comes to athletic training, but what really is plyometric training. Plyometric training uses intense bursts of energy like jumping to increase strength and flexibility in your leg muscles. This is a great form of training for sports that do a lot of quick bursts of movements like volleyball or basketball. But is not a great form of training for beginners. In today’s blog post we will be looking deep into what plyometrics are, what sports they are useful for, and some plyometric drills.
What are Plyometrics?
Plyometrics is a from of training that utilizes techniques like “jump training”, intense short amounts of activities that target the muscles that are found in your legs. These techniques help to increase strength and flexibility in your legs. Which helps athletes who need to use explosive movements in their sports like volleyball or basketball. While this kind of training is helpful for athletes who are in great shape, it’s not recommended for beginners since if it is not done properly it could lead to injury. The exercises that are included as plyometrics are running, throwing, jumping, kicking, and more.
Sports where plyometrics are useful
Plyometrics training is useful for sports that require a lot of quick bursts of movements like Volleyball, basketball, and more. This form of training is useful for volleyball players because it helps to increase an athletes ability to jump high and fast, increase their reaction time allowing them to move quickly to get the ball or react, and it helps to increase their speed and power. All of these are useful for volleyball because it is a sport that requirers athletes to be able to jump high and fast, be able to move quickly into position or to get a ball, and have enough power and speed to hit a powerful ball over the net. Plyometrics training is useful for basketball players because it helps to increase their vertical jump, increase their ability to accelerate quickly with explosive speed, and increases their agility to be able to make quick direction changes. These are useful for basketball because these athletes need to be able to jump to get rebounds or dunks, have the ability to quickly speed up to keep up with the ball by sprinting down the court, and have the agility to make quick pivots and stops.
Plyometric drills
While the term plyometrics can make it seem like the drills associated with this kind of training are extremely complicated. But a lot of drills associated with this training method are things that you have done before or have seen other people do. So here are 3 plyometrics drills that you can do.
- Jumping Rope: This is a drill that most people have done before but its fast paced jumping is a form of plyometrics that can help with coordination. Start by jumping rope for a time that feels comfortable to you and then increase the time the better you get.
- Pop Squat: This drills adds plyometrics to a normal squat. To do this drill start by doing a squat, as you come back up from the lunge bring your arms to your side and jump your feet together, immediately after jump your feet apart to do another squat.
- Burpee: Everyone has heard of a burpee or done a burpee in their life and it’s a great plyometrics drill. “To do a burpee stand with your feet planted firmly on the ground and shoulder - length apart, squat down and put your hands on the ground, jump your legs back so you are in a push up position and lower your body to the ground, then jump your feet to your hands, and jump as high as you can in a standing position with your hands above your head.”
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