How To Increase Your Vertical

Archive for the ‘Plyometrics’ Category

What Are Plyometrics?

I can’t tell you how many times I deal with different athletes that simply do not have a real understanding of plyometrics and truly how important they can be to increasing your vertical jump along with improving any explosive movements you may want to improve.

Plyometrics in essence, is a very specific type of exercise that is very specifically designed to produce, fast, powerful movements, and improve the functions in your nervous system.  These type of exercises are generally used by athletes to improve their performance with sports.  The exercises themselves are specific plyometric movements that causes the muscle to load and then contract in a very rapid sequence, use the strength, elasticity and innervation of muscle and the surrounding tissues to do things like jump higher, run faster, throw farther, or hit harder which is all dependent on the desired training goal.  Plyometric exercises are used to increase the speed of force of muscular contractions with the ultimate goal of increasing the height of a jump

Procedure:

Plyometric training exercises involve the practicing of very specific plyometric training movements that are designed to toughen tissues and train nerve cells to stimulate in a specific pattern of muscle contraction to enable the muscle to create as strong a contraction that it possibly can in the shortest amount of time.

There are 3 main phases that occur during a plyometric contraction:

1) Eccentric Phase: This is the initial phase of the contraction that involves first a rapid muscle lengthening movement

2) Amortization Phase:  This is the next phase and one of the most important phases.  The amortization phase is that brief moment that you are actually at a complete stop.

3) Cocentric Phase: The final phase is when the explosive muscles shorten and this enables the muscles to work together in doing the particular motion for the exercise.

These plyometric movements and exercises have the sole intention of developing your muscular power.  They act on the nerves, muscles and tendons to increase the amount of power you can use without necessarily increasing your maximum strength capacity,

Physics Of Muscular Power

In essence, the amount of muscular power you have is determined by how long it takes you to convert strength into speed.  This ability to convert strength into speed in a very short period of time is what it going to enable your body to do athletic movements that are beyond what your body’s raw ability may be.

Basically, what this means is that you can squat 1,000 pounds 100 times and you still may not be able to jump as high as someone that can squat 250 pounds 2 times.  It’s not just raw strength that will determine the amount of muscular power you have but the speed at which you can do the movements.

Muscle Tendon Component

In order for a muscle to cause movement, the must shorten which is also known as a concentric contraction.  While there is a maximum amount of force that a certain muscle can contract, if the muscle is lengthened at the same time it is loaded just prior to the contraction, it will end up producing a greater force via the storage of the elasticic energy.

And for this to take place most effectively, the amortization phase, that short phase where you are actually at a complete stand still, needs to be as short as possible.  By shortening the amortization phase, you are essentially making the muscle tendons act as a rubber band.  You want to lengthen the rubber band and release it as quickly as possibly to get the best results and your muscle tendons act the exact same way.

Bringing It All Together:

Now that we’ve gone through what’s going on when you do plyometric exercises, I wanted to just do a quick summary and pull this all together.

In essence, plyometrics are all about training your muscles to work faster by lengthening and shortening your muscles as fast as possible and the real key you are looking for is to shorten the amortization phase as much as possible.

Keep in mind that you can’t eliminate the amortization phase completely.  Any time that you are going one direction and then changing directions, there is going to be a point in time that you have to come to a complete stop but if you can minimize that as much as possible, you will start to strengthen the muscular power and will be able to start using those muscles faster than what your initial potential was.

Plyometric exercises are truly a great way to increase your vertical jump, run faster, and flat out train your muscles to work quicker.  Just make sure that you are training correctly and have a proven routine that you know works and you can find the best routines that I’ve found when you sign up to my newsletter here.

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Hey,

Whew… I’m getting ready to get winded because this is kinda long but really important so just be prepared .

Alright, so I want to talk to you today about plyometrics training, the importance of it in your vertical jump training and why there’s so much gosh darn confusion when it comes to people talking about and trying to explain plyometric training.

You see, most people are flat out doing it wrong…

And you know, it’s not their fault.

Plyometric training is really not all that easy to understand… There’s so much technical mumbo jumbo that people use and really not enough GOOD information that helps clear everything up.

So my goal here today is to give you a little better understanding of how plyometrics training works, why it works and how you can incorporate it into your vertical jump training program.

Sound good?

Here’s what’s going on with your muscles when you’re jumping and PLEASE, you gotta bear with me here, it’s really tough to explain without any super duper fancy diagrams (I’m not a diagram person, I’m just not all that artistic… SORRY!) but here we go anyway…

What’s actually making you jump is when your calf and thigh are fully extended.  Like when you’re whole skeletal system is completely vertical is when you’re body is in the best possible position to get you in the air.

Now the way I want you to think of your bones is like levers throughout your body and in order to actually move those levers, you need your muscles.

Your muscles, while they’re not really elastic, store elasticity once your bones and body are contracted.

You know… I’m gonna probably just make a video a little later that explains all of this but let’s keep rolling…

Anyway, this whole process of brief elasticity of your muscles and bones being levers takes place all over throughout your body.

So when plyometrics are done correctly, you can really increase your explosion of your muscles by increasing the elasticity and explosiveness of your muscles.

Make sense?

Of course not yet .

Here’s the process broken down for you…

There’s a loading phase, which is done by using your own body weight and gravity and this causes eccentric contraction (some fancy way of saying that the muscle is working as it’s lengthening).

And then amortization occurs (I know, more fancy lingo…).

What that is is just a simple point where there is a very brief pause of your body from the contraction phase to the explosion phase.  This is something that you can’t eliminate and is always there.

The amortization phase is actually the number one key to your explosion and increasing your vertical jump.

It needs to be as short as humanely possible to use the elasticity of the muscle.

Let’s dig deeper here…

So what’s happening is the muscle is retracting as you load and get ready to explode and as you retract the muscle, it gives it a sense of elasticity.  If you have too long of an amortization phase you aren’t going to have the explosiveness that you can truly achieve.

So you want that amortization phase to be as short as possible and it must be followed by an intense contraction in order to reap the full benefit of the neurological condition.

It’s like a big snap back of the elasticity of the muscle and that causes you to explode up.

Now here are some common errors that you want to avoid at all cost (seriously this will make the difference between you being flat out bummed with not getting any results and you being stoked on the inches you’ve gained):

1) Pacing or too many reps…

This is a big one… Too often people think that if they do MORE that they will get better results.  Well that flat out doesn’t work and actually lowers the intensity and the effectiveness of the drill

If you want to get maximum results, you need to focus on going balls out and being as explosive as humanely possible on every single rep that you do.  That’s the only way that you are going to increase the explosiveness of your muscles.

2) Doing an extra bounce (basically doing load, tiny hop, explode process)

Some of the “gurus” out there will tell you to do and to be honest, they’re just wrong…

This actually end up screwing up the entire flow of load and explode and you’re not gonna get the results you’re looking for.

You see, as the ground hits the foot, it olds the muscle and causes the eccentric contraction we were talking about before and then there’s the very brief amortization phase where you are actually at a stand still.

This is followed by a snapback shortening contraction of the muscle where that elasticity of the muscle is put into play and you are propelled upward into the air.

You MUST explode at full intensity and the explosion with release allows the muscles to train in a quicker environment.

And then the contraction being initiated when your muscle is loading puts additional stress on the muscle and will result in muscle growth and development which is exactly what you want .

So here’s how to properly do a plyometric workout:

Proper load (start with gravity and not extra weight)
A super brief moment of amortization.  You literally want to try to eliminate to the best of your ability that brief pause between the loading phase and the explosion phase.  It’s impossible to eliminate it completely, but the shorter the better.

And the intensity of the contraction is going to determine how effective the plyo is.

You want to keep your reps below 15 (I personally like to use 8-12 reps) with sets of 2-4 but absolutely no more than 10 and have proper recovery time.

Seriously, one of the biggest areas where people goof up is when they don’t allow for proper recovery time of their muscles and they actually end up HURTING their vertical jump.

You don’t want to do that… Trust me .

Now if you couple that with the right resistance training program you’re going to have insane results.

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Hey,

So when it comes to plyometric exercises, I get a TON of questions from athletes that are training, using plyometric exercises to increase their vertical jump but they aren’t quite sure if they are actually doing it correctly.

Let’s look at what a workout should be like…

A lot of people start out with a very high intensity workout with low repetitions and super high intensity, and yes we’re talking about plyometrics exercises, not weight lifting.

And what happens is, they’re doing everything right… They’re doing the right amount of volume, the right amount of reps and the right amount of intensity during each repetition.

But what they don’t feel is that burn that they’re normally used to, that burn that they normally associate with flat out kicking their butts and making sure they’re getting a good workout in. And they don’t feel sore the next day so they end up wondering if the plyometrics training that they’re doing is actually working or if it’s just going to waste.

And hey… I can understand. The last thing you want to do is be doing all of this work, kicking your butt to try and increase your vertical jump only to find out that it did nothing for you.

That would just suck.

Let’s be real… sometimes that burn that you feel when you’re doing an exercise actually feels good! It let’s you know that what you’re doing is working and while you may feel crummy as heck afterward, in the long run you’re gonna be that much better.

So here’s the difference between strength training and plyometrics training (and it’s actually a really BIG difference).

Strength training is super important for getting an explosive vertical jump but when you’re doing strength training, you’re actually putting a whole lot more tension on each muscle fiber and that results in micro-tears (no worries though, that’s actually a really good thing ) and that results in more muscle strength.

That’s actually what causes that sore feeling the next morning when you wake up the next morning or a couple of days later (you know… the one that makes you think “what the heck was I thinking yesterday?!”).

Now here’s the difference between strength training and doing quickness and plyometric training.

This type of training is not going to be putting anywhere near the same kind of tension on the muscles (although with a good plyometric program, you’re still going to be putting a lot of tension on the muscles) as strength training does. It just isn’t going to happen and as a result you just aren’t going to feel as sore as you do from strength training.

So what should it feel like when you’re actually doing plyometric training?

You should feel energetic, warm and flat out good! It should feel just like if you were playing in a game. The same kind of feeling.

With each and every jump that you do, you should feel like you are jumping higher and higher than you’ve ever jumped before (which is really the whole idea of doing a quickness and plyometric program). Each repetition needs to be done at a super high intensity and you need to feel like you’re continually jumping higher and higher than ever before and that’s actually you’re goal.

So to sum this whole bad boy up, with a plyometric and quickness program with the right volume, the right intensity and the right number of sets and reps, don’t expect to feel sore the next day or in a couple of days like you do when you do weightlifting and strength training.

But if you’re a beginner don’t be surprised if you are in fact a little bit sore. You’re still using muscles in a way that you probably haven’t used them before.

And don’t get all weirded out if you don’t feel any burn when you’re actually doing the quickness and plyometrics training. That’s not the point of the workout and in fact if you are feeling any pain or burn, you’re probably not training correctly since this type of training is all about training your muscles at faster speeds and higher intensity than you’ve EVER trained before so you end up increasing your quickness and reactive ability and training your central nervous system to jump higher.

Wooo… I’m a little winded now but that’s the jist of the whole thing.

You just want to make sure that you’re jumping higher than you’ve ever jumped before when you’re doing your plyometrics training and in fact, it’s probably a darn good idea to be measuring yourself and making sure that’s actually the case!

I hope that helps you out and gets you jumping higher!

I’m rootin’ for ya!

–David Curtis