About Plyometrics

Plyometric training is often used to jump high in basketball, volleyball but also numerous other sports in which explosive movement play a major factor. Plyometrics is used to produce quicker movements that are more powerful.
One way in which it works is in improving the functions of the nervous system. It can help you in all aspects to improve your performance in sports, and especially in how to jump high. Plyometric training involves high-intensity, explosive muscular contractions that invoke the stretch reflex (stretching the muscle before it contracts so that it contracts with greater force).

You can ask yourself: “what long-term effect does practising plyometrics have on the body and performance?”
A wide variety of training studies shows that plyometrics can improve performance in the vertical jump, long jumping, sprinting and sprint cycling.

You can test that plyometrics really work in a very simple way. From a standing position you jump, and when you land bend through your knees. Remain in this semi-squat position for a couple of seconds and then launch yourself up again. Now do this exercise, but instead of waiting a couple of seconds jump immediately up the second time. You’ll notice that you’ll get a lot higher. This is because the energy of the first jump can be stored for a very short time in your tendons and muscles. In the second exercise your muscles use this energy to jump again. In the first exercise this energy gets lost because you waited too long.

You can start training using this exercise or doing lateral hops on a box. Other great exercises are hurdles jumps or depth jumps. However there’s a catch to this. Plyometric exercises involve an increased risk of injury due to the large forces generated during training and performance. It is important that you get the right information so you don’t waste your time doing ineffective exercises and even worse: put yourself at risk of injury. Click on the link below and learn how to use the “stretch shortening cycle (SSC)”, plyometrics, and complex plyometric training to boost your performance.