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Improve You Speed And Agility With Plyometrics

This article will teach you what the benefits of plyometric training is as far as improving your speed and agility goes. To summarize, you will learn the: what (can plyometrics do for you), the why (you should use this sort of training) and the how (it can benefit you). The relation to speed and agility will also be discussed.

Let’s explore what plyometrics actaully are
Plyometrics are simply a type of exercises whose purpose it is to link strength with speed of movement in order to create a lot of power.The idea is that if you use more of your strength, faster, the power will shoot through the roof.An example of application of plyometrics in a sport that requires a lot of speed and agility is doing a vertical  jump for height in basketball.
Plyometric exercises focus on just two things:
– increase your bodies ability to absorb and store force;- teach you how to release that force — creating a movement which has a lot of power behind it.

If your sport of choice involves any throwing, kicking, jumping or lifting, then plyometric training can benefit you. Some examples of sports like these are: soccer, power lifting, basketball, football, baseball etc.

Benefits of Plyometric Training for Speed and Agility
Plyometric drills are meant to train your muscles and tendons to absorb high amounts of force and teach your nervous system how to control and stabilize that force. Speed and agility can be developed very quickly with such practices – the best gains come if you have already strengthened your muscles and tendons.

The conditioning of the nervous system is the reason plyometric training produces very quick results. Because of this pay special attention to these guidelines:
* only perform when rested
* perform with maximum concentration and focus for each rep
train harder not longer (no more than 20 reps REGARDLESS of exercise used)do not perform more than 3 sets per training session (no matter the difficulty of the particular exercise)

Drill this into your head: Train HARDER, not looonger.

Plyometrics also bring improvements in the long run, however these rely more on changes in your body structure (incidently this explains why nutrition plays a big part in the results you get with plyometric training). Plyometric training will change the structure of your muscles and tendons.Plyometrics change your body in the sense that they make your muscles and tendons take on elastic properties.
Nuts and Bolts of a Plyometric Movement:

* first the body absorbs and stabilizes the force from a negative (eccentric) contraction
* as it does this, it  loads up your muscles and tendons with force (think of it like a compressing a spring)
* your body releases this energy in the opposite direction

Here’s an example,when you cock back your arm to throw a rock the natural thing you do is to first cock your arm backwards.  The effect of this is that the muscles of your arm and shoulder muscles lock, forcing your tendons to stretch thus storing a lot of force in those tendons and essentially turning them into loaded springs. When you throw, the stored force is released, allowing the rock to be accelerated at a rate which is higher than your normal rate of force development.

The reason plyometric training was so big when it came out in the 70 ’s is that it allowed athletes to specifically train their muscles and tendons to be more spring-like. You naturally use plyometric movements but before plyometric training came out there was no clear cut way to train for this. That is why it was thought for so long that jumping for height for example was an innate ability.
As I said before, the more you use this type of training the more you will also develop an inherent springiness in your muscles and tendons.  Coupled with an increased nervous system learning on how to corectly perform the movement at higher speeds, you can expect to see massive improvements in your speed and agility.To further support this process you should also learn about:speed and agility training and strength
The question is: how do I adapt the principles of plyometric training to my speed and agility training? The answer is, and you aren’t going to like it, by tailoring your plyometric training to the specific speed and agility requirements of the sport that you are practicing. This is a long discussion and goes way beyond the scope of this article. For more tips click here Speed and Agility Training

This article has discussed:

* what plyometrics are
* how plyometrics work
* the role of plyometrics as part of your speed and agility training
* the benefits you can expect when introducing plyometric drills into yours speed and agility training

Make sure to try this great exercise for speed and agility training improving strength

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