My previous blogs in this plyometric series advocated the importance of beginning plyometric training by learning to land and developing a basic sense of rhythm and timing.
By the end of today’s blog, you will understand my 4 phases to the plyometric pyramid, and what plyometrics should look like at the various stages of the athletic journey, from a young child all the way up to the elite athlete.
Phase 1: FUNdamentals
During the FUNdamentals stage, plyometric training for the youth athlete is simply about children having fun and learning how to move their body in time and space.
Whilst technique is important for reducing injury risk and enhancing performance, younger children are often not powerful enough to present a significant injury risk to themselves with poor technique, and competitive performance should not be the primary focus.
In fancy terms, the various qualities that improve children’s awareness of how to co-ordinate their bodies can be defined as the perceptual motor skills, something I’ve spoken about in greater detail with the 9th guest of the Platform to Perform Podcast, Shane Fitzgibbon.
Rather than boring young athletes with a sets and reps approach (which I’ve spoken about previously) or being overly analytical on children’s technique, coaches and parents should think about plyometric training within this stage as movement puzzles which provide opportunities for children explore the different ways in which they can move their bodies in relation onto, off of, and around different objects like Jeremy Frish’s youth athletes do here).
Other examples of movement puzzles which can be used as disguised plyometric training include:
Cross the river
Prediction jumps (kids start at point A, and are given a specific amount of jumps or hops to get to point B, doing this with eyes closed adds to the perceptual motor skills)
Whilst technique is of course important, young children’s brains are developing rapidly, and giving them a chance to explore these neural connections, is probably a better option than boring with excessively detailed instruction.
The FUNdamentals include:
Gaining competency over fundamental movements, with a specific focus on squatting, hip bending, single leg movements, and landings)
Developing a sense of rhythm and timing with low level foot contacts (metronome skipping is a perfect example)
Learning to land
Phase 2: Maximise Force Production
Without the ability to put the brakes on, or even string together some vague sense of rhythm and coordination, any attempts to jump (pun intended) to this stage prematurely will result in knocking a child’s confidence and best, or worse, a severe injury.
During phase 2, providing our youth athletes have the cognitive capabilities to take on sufficent instruction, we can begin to be a bit more prescriptive in terms of movement technique.
Although the below are not technically ‘true’ plyometrics, once kids have demonstrated a firm grasp on the FUNdamentals, we can begin to focus their attention on improving how much force they can produce, and if appropriate, we can begin to use the below exercises as monitoring tools of a child’s progression:
Standing long jump
Counter movement jump
Phase 3: Minimising Ground Contact Time
The number one factor differentiating elite sprinters from their sub-elite counterparts is how much force they can produce within fractions of a second.
Another reason the foundation of my plyometric pyramid covers a wide range of fundamentals is that not every child wants to be an elite sprinter.
After 7 years of secondary school physical education, however, children should have developed competency, confidence and a sufficient level of rhythm in a wide range of jumping and landing tasks, to ensure the doors of recreational sport will still be open to them.
For an example of how I would break down 7 years of plyometric progressions, and integrate these into a secondary school P.E curriculum, drop me an email via this website’s ‘Contact’ page
If children wish to pursue sport at a higher level, however, then we can begin to focus on combining the ability to produce a lot of force with minimising ground contact time.
Example exercises include:
Triple broad jumps (think boing, boing boing, not jump and stick x 3)
Bounding
Phase 4: (All the Above) Under Fatigue
The pinnacle of the plyometric pyramid is to reproduce force under fatigue.
In the case of plyometrics I don’t simply mean being physically tired, I also mean including some element of cognitive fatigue (aka decision making) since athletes are often required to produce force in as short a time frame as possible, whilst simultaneously calculating what decision to make.
With the brain shown to change how it processes movement information in an injured knee, it makes sense to involve the brain more in our plyometric programs, so we can prepare the body and mind, as one integrated unit, to mee the demands of sport.
Gymnastics aside, rarely in sport do jumps, landings or rebounds occur in isolation. Therefore, including an element of decision making as part of our plyometric exercises, means we might be better able to prepare athletes for both the physical and the cognitive demands of their sport.
Simple ways of incorporating plyometric whilst under fatigue include:
Plyometrics between bouts of technical training (i.e. sport training, and then a plyometric ‘movement break’)
Including an element of decision making after the plyometric (e.g. a footballer jumping for a header, and then responding with a change of direction in relation to where the football has gone)
Key Take Homes:
·Plyometric training can loosely fall into 4 phases: FUNdamentals, maximising force production, maximising force production whilst minimising contact time…and finally…perfecting all of these whilst under some element of fatigue
About the Author
Todd Davidson is a UKSCA accredited strength and conditioning coach and qualified P.E Teacher who has gained experience with scholastic athletes Olympic athletes and everyone in between. Todd's passion for improving the physical literacy of the next generation, and athleticism within adults, comes from his belief that strength and conditioning should not be a service that is solely reserved for the sporting elite. If you would like discuss anything in the content presented, or have any questions relating to your own performance goals, please get in touch.