Jump Jump Jump...

Speed Insiders Call In Day

Last night I held a question call in night for my Speed Insider members. I absolutely love calls like this. Normally, my teleseminar calls are around 60 minutes long, but last night's call went over 2 hours. I appreciate the questions the members were asking. There was great feedback from each member on other member's questions as well. That is exactly what I like about my Speed Insiders program. Everyone wants the best quality results and are willing to give quality answers. There were definitley some big breakthroughs with many of the answers that I was able to give.

The questions were not just limited to training athletes. There were business questions, marketing questions, new facility and business opportunity questions, we even got into the psychology of how to talk to clients to accomplish a certain result. To all of you that were on the call, great stuff! I look forward to scheduling an open call.

How to Use Jumping in Your Program

Jump training or plyometric training is still a hot topic. It certainly deserve discussion when ever it is brought up. I don't think it is being used properly. My opinion is based on many years of training athletes and seeing the results. Let me explain...

The issue that concerns me the most is... when I hear about an entire training program dedicated only to jumping. I have seen it for years in my community high school volleyball coaches dedicating 60 plus minutes, 3 times a week to jumping! My body hurts just mentioning that. How the misunderstanding of volume became so screwed up is beyond me.

Let's not forget jumping is a skill just like other speed skills. The more you do in one workout is not necessarily a good thing. The more quality work at a high intensity is a good thing.

It is also important to understand that strength is the foundation of jumping and speed. If you can improve the strength of the athlete the jump training or plyometric training you use will have greater value. Plus, strength training will decrease the injury potential. I personally know that if I improve the overall strength of my athletes I will have better results on jumping. But, what I am seeing more and more is athletes performing jumping programs with high volume and never doing any strength training. This is a problem. I am not saying you can't do jump training until you have done several weeks of strength training, you just need to control your volume and base the jump training off technique early on until you have adequate strength to handle more intensity. Also, you can be doing strength training along with the jump training.

The primary focus in our facility on jumping is on quality movement in the jump and landing along with appropriate intensity. If the athlete is capable of handling some load (vertimax, bands...) we will use them. We want our athletes to jump as hard as they can to challenge the nervous system on each attempt. When doing more plyometric (stretch shortening cycle training) based training we are now focusing on quickness off the ground per landing. We still want great technique but emphasize the quickness off the ground. In true jump training we will not worry as much about the quick re-jump and put more emphasis on the intensity and power output of each jump.

People are usually amazed when I tell them I use only 25-50 total jumps- usually closer to 25. This does not include low box drills that have very little impact. We break the total number into a few different exercises with 2-3 sets per exercise. To be honest, my most productive jumping is when we do 4-5 sets of 5-6 vertimax jumps- simple and to the point. The athletes respond very well from the vertimax.

Hopefully this information gives you a little to think about when doing jump training AS A PART OF THE TOTAL PROGRAM.

Yours in Speed,

Lee

PS: If you want to take advantage all the great resources my Speed Insider Members continually receive go to http://www.speedinsiders.com/ to get a 2 month FREE trial. I would love to hear your questions and have you be on my next open call - but you have to be a Speed Insider to have this invite.