If you’ve been around sport long enough, you start to realize something: the athletes who are really good at plyometrics sometimes are just that, really good at plyometrics, and not quite as good when it comes to actually jumping. Although plyometrics train things like jumping or sprinting, fundamentally, they are not jumping and sprinting.
I’ve been learning a lot about some of the exact differences from Adarian Barr where as earlier in my coaching career, I just realized that focusing on plyometrics instead of jumping led to lower dynamic jumps, such as dunking or high jumping. I also realized that playing sports such as basketball or volleyball were fundamental in preventing this “plyometric gap”. Plyometrics can help athletes jump higher, but they, like weights, must be treated as a means to an end to reach one’s absolute potential.
Part of the reason that sports can bridge the jumping gap is because sports are, by nature, triplanar and asymmetrical. Depth jumps and hurdle hops are somewhat sagittal plane in nature (although they have subtle transverse plane features, such as internal and external rotation of the femurs in loading and exploding). In sport, and jumping, legs typically have slightly different roles, and a good athlete can put themselves into a position for these roles to be fulfilled.
Myree Bowden prepares for an asymmetrical takeoff
As such, at some point, it makes sense to either allow for some functional asymmetry in classical plyometrics, or to utilize plyometrics that will force more triplanar and asymmetrical movement in the jumping process.
The first option is to perform standard, forward hurdle hops with some slight asymmetries. I’ve seen high level athletes performing the movement like this before, and I learned from coach Barr the benefits of performing the movement somewhat staggered, where the job of each leg is slightly different.
In addition to the different training stimuli, this type of work also gives the movement some variability, to keep from the same double leg plant motion over and over again which can create boredom performed over an entire season. The subtle variations that can be done here are many, such as stagger LR, land even, stagger RL, or going LR, RL, LR, RL, etc.
Another hurdle hop I think has a lot to offer, and that is a favorite in early season training amongst many is multi-directional hurdle hops. To perform this, hurdles are lined in up in a series of forward and lateral hops. The video below is from former Just Fly Performance Podcast guest, Joe DeFranco. The hops are done with a lower center of mass, as it is more reflective of the demands of American Football.
In reality, these hops could be done with a variety of coaching points, so long as it reflected the demands of sport. They are awesome for track and field athletes that tend to live and be coached in a “feet together” and sagittal plane environment. If I’ve learned anything over the last few years, it’s that simple plyometric exercises can be tweaked and altered in a variety of ways that allows for more progress over time, especially as athletes get closer to their highest performance level.
If you enjoy this series, and want to see how to put these exercises together in context of a complete program, check out our books and training groups, particularly “Vertical Ignition” and “Legendary Athleticism”. Be a part of the revolutionary training systems that are getting dozens of athletes to lifetime bests in speed, jumping and explosive power!
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