Are you sick of your current workout regime for speed and strength, but don’t want to succumb to “program ADD”, hopping to another training template the moment your gains start to slow, or even reverse?
The best way to add variety to a program, especially with intermediate and advanced athletes is not to play exercise roulette, but rather, to make subtle changes to the specific qualities that athletes are training, and make them fun in the process.
It has been said that there really isn’t much new in the world of strength and sport coaching, but you can innovate and make the field better if you take what is already present and either make it more efficient, or more fun. To this end, I’d like to share a quick tool in the toolbox that can do both, and be used as a warmup, or as a stand-alone programming method. This method is the “variable jump ladder”.
The variable jump ladder is based on a study I often quote, the “Rewzon” long jump study, which showed that a group of long jumpers that would jump, trying to hit a series of target distances, the majority of which were submaximal, eventually out-jumped another group of jumpers that simply jumped all-out every jump.
Basically, jumping for a spectrum of distances (or we could also assume heights) will yield a more robust motor program then an athlete who only tries to grind maximal heights or distances every single attempt. It also is less taxing on the nervous system, which allows a lower stress response over time, and better adaptation.
This can also explain part of the reason that basketball and volleyball players have such great vertical leaps, where a large variety of different outcome goal jumps are performed!
I’m not saying that someone must train in this manner every single workout, year round, as the basis of highest performance is some form of regular, maximal, specific training, but as we can see, approaching training only in the maximal manner will yield sub-maximal results!
Therefore, here are three workouts/games (plus 1 bonus game) that you can infuse into your workouts to break monotony, improve an athlete’s focus on warmups, or make for a psychologically easy “off-day” when an athlete’s nervous system isn’t ready for maximal, “PR” effort work.
1. Standing Long Jump or Three Jump Distance Game
Needs: Tape measure and Cones
The standing long jump “game” is the easiest of the three to perform, and all you need is a cone, and preferably a tape measure. Athletes can go one at a time, or at once if you have multiple cones or markers.
You’ll set up the “game” as follows:
- Set a starting line at which athletes will stand and jump forward.
- Athletes will set a marker out around 18” in front of their furthest broad jump.
- The athlete will jump and land just beyond that marker (measured at the heels), trying to clear it by as little distance as possible. They will then move the marker forward to the place their heels landed.
- If the athlete fails to jump farther forwards than the cone, it is considered a “foul”. An athlete gets 2 fouls before they are “disqualified” and not allowed to jump anymore.
- The athlete will jump every 15 seconds or so, repeating this process, and moving the cone forward systematically.
- The goal of the game is to take as many jumps as possible before “fouling out”. A good athlete may get 10 jumps or more before they are done.
- This game could also be done from a running start if you could land in a sand pit.
So a sample progression could go like this, with a starting line and a tape measure:
- Athlete’s best standing long jump is 10’0” even, so the first cone will be set at 8”6”.
- The athlete jumps 8’8”, and moves the cone up to 8’8”.
- The athlete jumps 9’1” and moves the cone up to 9’1”.
- The athlete jumps 9’0, and registers the first “foul”. One more foul will disqualify the athlete.
- The athlete jumps 9’5” (overcompensates!), and moves the cone up to 9’5”.
- The athlete jumps 9’7” and moves the cone to 9’7”
- The athlete jumps 9’8” and moves the cone to 9’8”
- The athlete jumps 9’8” and fails to improve, therefore fouling twice, and registering 5 jumps.
The variations of this “game” are really only limited by your creativity. Mold it towards your outcome goal! You can also do things like standing triple jump, jump with the left or right leg only, etc. etc.
2. Vertec Height Game
Needs: A Vertec measuring unit, just jump mat, or a wall and chalk.
Picture of a combine or high vertical jump to a vertec preferably
This game proceeds exactly like the one above, however, the athlete will set the vertec at 1 foot and 3 inches below their best recorded jump. This can be done standing or with a short run-in off one or two feet.
The athlete will jump and try to tick off as few vertec markers as possible, as the goal is to record the maximal amount of jumps before “fouling out” by failing to hit any vertec marker boards twice. I play this game quite often, and in my old age (32) it has been an amazing way to train on days where I’m not “feeling it”, as well as giving me more awareness of my body, and getting a lot of jump repetitions in. I’ll get 50 jump reps in playing this game with my training partner without really feeling like I did a “workout”, and by the end of the game, I’m often jumping as high as a day where “the pan is hot”.
Here is a quick example of how this game would work, although I’m sure you have a good idea based on the last game.
- My best touch on the vertec off one step is 11’, so I’ll start with the bottom board of the vertec at 9’9”.
- I jump repeatedly, touching: 9’10”, 9’10.5”, 10’, 10’1”, 10’1.5”, 10’2”, 10’3”, 10’4.5”, 10’5”, 10’6”, FOUL, 10’7.5”, 10’8”, 10’8.5”, FOUL, and I’m out.
- I registered 13 jumps in this series. I’ll usually run through this series 3 times. My record is 20 jumps.
You can also play this with a “just jump” mat, or anything else that measures vertical jump height incrementally.
3. Variable Bounding
I’ve talked about variable bounding before, so this will be the quickest point of the three, as it is also one of the simplest. Variable bounding is simply laying out cones at subtly random intervals into a “course” that athletes bound across, trying to have their ground contact near each cone.
In setting up variable bounding, say an athlete can typically bound in a landing pattern of once every 10 feet over a 20 meter course. In this case, 8’6” would be the mean, and cones could be anywhere from 7 feet to 9’6” apart, give or take a few inches.
https://www.instagram.com/p/-IDEgpSlEX/?taken-by=justflysports
Performing this type of bounding prior to a sprint or jump workout can really prime the athlete, widening the path of their movement pattern, and leaving them feeling more reflexive and responsive. Again, it also makes a nice total workout if an athlete isn’t feeling particularly fresh on a given day.
Bonus Game: Clean Target Speed Game
Needs (tendo or similar bar speed measuring unit)
I recently set up an “adventure race” for one of my athletic teams, similar to the “amazing race” television series. One of the challenges to advance was to clean a bar loaded with 135lbs, and achieve a peak velocity of exactly 2.25 m/s. I thought this would be fairly easy, as it only took me a few tries in the test stages, but it played out to taking each group of 4-5 athletes about 70 total tries to accomplish.
I didn’t set this up to laugh at my athletes trying to accomplish the task (especially because I didn’t think it would take as long as it did!). I set it up because I thought it would be a fun challenge, but I found something interesting in the course of the challenge. The athlete who ended up doing the most cleans trying to get that coveted 2.25 m/s (he did about 40 cleans in 4 minutes time) had an amazing day at cleans the next Monday, three days later, hitting 93% of his old 1RM for an easy triple in a low-key environment.
There comes a time where overload doesn’t just come from sets, reps and %1RM, but also the challenge to the motor pattern that makes up the movement itself.
That being said, if you have measurement devices (such as push, gymaware, tendo, etc.) you can add this extra dimension to any lift by encouraging a particular velocity metric on any movement.
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