Topic: Speed and Agility – Plyometric and Strength Training
Thread: Please review and answer the questions presented below. Use your text and slides to answers
the questions. A high school basketball coach asks the new strength and conditioning coach if she will
watch his athletes perform their plyometric routine, which includes depth jumps. When they perform
the depth jumps, she notices that many of them have poor landing mechanics (e.g., little flexion of the
hips and knees, the knees buckling inward). What would be an appropriate suggestion she could make to
the coach regarding how the drills should be performed?
Replies: Choose answers from 2 of your fellow students and comment on 1 answer where you feel the
response was accurate and one response where you disagree with the author:
How and why you believe the response was accurate?
Why do you disagree with suggestions made by the student in their thread response?
Submit your thread by 11:59 p.m. (ET) on Thursday of Module/Week 3 and your 2 replies by 11:59 p.m.
(ET) on Sunday of the same module/week.
The main reasons for focusing on how an athlete lands can be broken down into two
separate categories, to prevent injuries, and to produce power or explosion. Both of these factors
are equally important. Athletes are already exposed to a variety of lower body injuries that can
range from ankle sprains to low back pain. Reoccurring hard landings can lead to premature wear
and tear or degeneration of the ankle, knee, and the hips. One of the main concerns is tearing the
ACL, the leading culprit for ACL tears comes foot pronation, tibia-internal rotation, and valgus
position of the knee. As a new strength and conditioning coach there are a few different things I
would do to fix the athlete’s poor landing mechanics. I would set up a daily regiment for the
athletes to work on their landing mechanics before we did anymore plyometric or jump work. I
would keep this up for at least six weeks in order to let the new movement patterns to be learned
correctly. Once learned the body has created a motor program that becomes permanent. So, once
an athlete has learned the basics of landing correctly, then their body will be extremely likely use
what was learned from this program whenever it seemed possible. Even when an athlete comes
down in an awkward position, they will be much more likely to initiate their glutes and land
more softly than before. A few exercises I would use are a box jump where the landing is the
focus, single leg lateral jumps, broad jumps with a soft landing, and stair step jumps.
Box jump begin with flat feet facing the box, perform the jump, focusing on the landing,
and step down off the box. As you progress increase the height of the box.
Single leg lateral jump, start with one leg bound laterally, and land on the opposite foot.
Make sure the hip, knee and ankle are in a neutral position.
Broad jumps, jump concentrically off of both feet and land as softly as possible with the
feet flat. Walk to starting position after each jump.
Stair step jumps, use different size boxes. With the boxes in front of you start by jumping
on the small box and immediately after landing explode on to the next box focusing on the
landing.
I would also do some work to strengthen the knees and posture. Studies show that
specific strength training is a great way to increase knee flexion during landing which helps to
body land softly and absorb the shock to the jump. These are just a few exercises you can do to
help with landing mechanics. Strength and flexibility of the hips, knees, and ankles can also help
prevent injury when performing plyometric work.
All in all, it is important that athletes learn these landing techniques before continuing
their jump training. If incorrect mechanics continue to be ignored then injuries are sure to follow.
I would start with these simple exercises to get the basic landing mechanics where they need to
be and see how they progress from there.
References:
Dai, B., Layer, J. and Hinshaw, T., 2016. Posture-specific strength and landing
mechanics. Lower Extremity Review Magazine, [online] Available at:
<https://lermagazine.com/article/posture-specific-strength-and-landing-mechanics> [Accessed
31 May 2021].
Hauschildt, M., 2002. Landing Mechanics: What, Why, and When. nsca’s performance
training journal, 7(1).
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