EXSC 541 DB 1
Prompt:
“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?
When working with youth athletes, form and mechanics should be one of the top priorities of
the strength coach to ensure their athletes are performing movements safely and avoiding repetitive
forces on the body using improper mechanics and risking serious injury. In jumping sports, like
basketball, it has been shown that up to 80% of the injuries take place in a non-contact scenario, such as
landing from a jump (Bedo, 2022). With that being said, many coaches program plyometric drills, such as
depth jumps, into their workouts to help athletes prepare for those loading and landing moments in a
live game. Depth jumps are considered to be one of the more advanced plyometric drills in the world of
strength and conditioning, as it requires the body to land from a given height and absorb ground
reaction forces and then immediately exert forces back into the ground to produce vertical acceleration
via a phenomenon known as the stretch shortening cycle. A study done in 2021 looked at the
effectiveness of strengthening the gluteal medius, popliteal and tibialis posterior muscles through a 6
week program with the goal of reducing dynamic knee valgus and found that the 6 week intervention
using elastic band for resistance not significantly effective (Wilczyński, 2021). While the strengthening of
the gluteal medius, popliteal, and tibialis anterior muscles is crucial in improving knee valgus, resistance
training with true weights and proper form might yield more significant results. With that in mind, this
strength coach could incorporate a combination of resistance training with resistance bands. A focus on
the squat pattern could be an appropriate place to start and correct the knee valgus without plyometric
stimulus due to the identical pattern of the movements. Programming squat patterns into this high
school teams workouts will allow the coach to develop and strengthen both the neurological and
physiological components seen in the depth jumps. Once the coach feels like the lower body strength of
the athletes is where it needs to be to progress, the coach could use a middle ground plyometric of a
countermovement jump. In this movement, the same landing mechanics of the depth jump are used,
but the step off pre-loading component is removed, making it a slightly simpler movement. One study on
volletball players found that training with higher counts of countermovement jumps actually was more
effective for increasing jump height than depth jumps, so adding this movement is not only safe for
these athletes, but also effective to the goal of increasing their jump height (Ruffieux, 2020). After the
coach feels like the athletes have mastered this movement, then they can progress into the depth jump
drill. The coach should place an emphasis on cuing the athletes to step off the box and attempt to land
as “soft” or “quiet” as possible, using their arms to load their lower body in order to maximize the
vertical propulsion phase of the movement. Again, as the athletes perform these, the coach should
continue watching for excessive hip flexion and knee valgus, progressing and regressing as needed with
the athletes.
References:
Bedo, B. L. et al. (2022). Landing mechanics of basketball and volleyball athletes: a kinematic approach.
Human Movement, 23(1), 80-88. https://doi.org/10.5114/hm.2021.104189
Ruffieux, J., Wälchli, M., Kim, K. M., & Taube, W. (2020). Countermovement jump training is more
effective than drop jump training in enhancing jump height in non-professional female volleyball
players. Frontiers in physiology, 11, 231.
Wilczyński, B., Wąż, P., & Zorena, K. (2021). Impact of Three Strengthening Exercises on Dynamic Knee
Valgus and Balance with Poor Knee Control among Young Football Players: A Randomized
Controlled Trial. Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland), 9(5), 558.
https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare9050558
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