What is the best plyometric for double leg jump improvement?
I get asked this a lot. There are a lot of great plyometrics out there, such as depth drops, basic depth jumps with varying outcomes, multi-jumps from a standing start, medicine ball throws and depth jump integrations, and more.
Hurdle hops are a plyometric that are more common to track and field by nature. This is likely for a few reasons such as:
- Conservation of energy and primal muscle function (i.e. elastic energy return in legs tucking up immediately after impulse delivery)
- Shorter ground contact times
- Rhythm implications
- Barrier similarities rather than leaping for an overhead object
Although these are all great ideals that make hurdle hops a perennial favorite on my end, I’ve always wondered something.
Why, despite the type of plyometric I do, when I’m not playing basketball or volleyball, is my jumping not as good?
I’ve found the same for athletes I’ve trained. Those who are doing a team sport, at least a few times a week, especially basketball, will generally reach the closest to their genetic ability.
I’m always digging into what team sport offers athletes who simply want to jump high or run fast, and learning from Adarian Barr, a huge answer, amongst others, is timing.
In this regard, we look not only in terms of linear jumping, every landing and takeoff like the other, but we look into sport asymmetry, showing us how complex each athletic skill really is, and how it is remarkably timed by our subconscious mind into an often linear throw, jump or run.
Athletic movement should not just be looked at in terms of muscle or force, but also in terms of rhythm, vibration and waveforms.
In this regards, we can introduce waveform concepts into any plyometric by making it asymmetrical or changing the shape of the movement. On the simple level, we have classical plyos like one of my all time favorite, the Swedish drill of hopping flat over 2 low hurdles, into one BIG hurdle jump.
On the outside, this may just look like a way to spice up traditional hurdle hops, and it certainly is, but unpacking it a bit, there is a distinct waveform aspect that makes it highly transferrable to jumping off the run. In fact, when I was jumping 7 feet in high jump, I could make it over a single high bar of 4’8” or 56 inches after a 2-hurdle lead in. In future training, my depth jumping over a single hurdle may have been even better, but my timing was diminished, and I hovered around 6’9, although this result was certainly multi-factorial in nature, timing was a big reason I lacked some fine tuning in my final takeoff steps.
This is also a big reason that in track and field, various jumps compliment each other in terms of waveform similarities.
A very simple plyometric I’ve been operating with lately, has been simple “long-high” hurdle jumps, the original concept of which was posted on barrunning.com. For this, the goal is to jump low and long, and then high. In this realm, the arms and shins must time with the outcome, and various aspects of conversion of horizontal to vertical force can be fine tuned.
In summary, if you aren’t getting the results you want from the same plyometrics done over and over again, start looking at waves and timing, rather than simply force output.
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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