I have written a few articles before in regards to proper jump training or plyometric progressions for young athletes. Click here to read about our beginner plyometric progressions.
As I have stated before, we must work on proper landing mechanics before we start working towards reducing ground contact time. Young athletes have to learn how to absorb the force of landing before trying to produce force in a repetitive and quick fashion. Elasticity, stretch shortening cycle and amortization phase are all fancy terms used when talking about true plyometrics. To keep it simple, the goal of a true plyometric is to jump as high as you can while being as quick as you can off the ground.
The thing is that most growing 12 - 16 year olds are not ready for the kind of impact that true plyometrics bring to the body. If they still struggle with landing a box jump, they definitely are not ready to do tuck jumps. I know jumping seems simple and harmless, but have you ever watched a big 12 year jump and land? Sometimes it makes my knees hurt just watching them.
Is there middle ground? I would like to think that there is. A few months ago I started to have my more advanced younger clients do plyometric jumps in reps of 3 - 5. The video below will give you a good idea of what I am talking about.
We are still working on being quick off the ground without trying to jump over hurdles or dropping off boxes. Proper landing mechanics are still being enforced after the 3rd jump of each rep. I have the athletes perform 9 jumps, broken down into 3 short sets of 3 reps.
This is this just one example of intermediate plyometrics that I use with my athletes that are ready for this kinds of training.
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