A lot of fighters ask me about plyometrics. Whenever you see content from S&C coaches online, you can bet they’ll mention them at some point if not all the time. This is with good reason, there’s decades of research showing that doing plyometrics can make you stronger, more powerful, more agile, and all-round more athletic (they’re especially important for strikers).
The questions I get usually are
- Should I be doing them? (Generally yes)
- How should I be doing them?
The last part is a bit more complicated. If you do too little plyometrics at too low an intensity, they won’t do much for you. If you do too much at too high an intensity, you risk some unnecessary joint damage.
That last sentence is true of all types of training. The only difference is, with most other training we have well-defined ways to know how much is too little or too much, and books upon books of research on how to structure and progress your training. However, while we know that plyometrics are very worth doing, we don’t have clear guidelines for plyometrics. Even when two athletes do the same jump, their bodies might move and handle force in their own unique way. Because of this, and a lack of research, we still don’t know the best way to measure, adjust and progress intensity for them
The real answer here is you have to be sensible and use your judgement. The lived experience of a coach plays a huge role here, as their knowledge & experience give them a better intuitive understanding of how an exercise is affecting you and a basis of understanding the smartest way to progress forward over time from there.
What Are Plyometrics
When most people think of plyometrics, they just think “jumps”. This is just the surface-level view of how they usually look, rather than what they actually do. A plyometric is a fast, explosive movement that uses a rapid drop and a fast turnaround to generate more power than you would at a slower pace or from a dead stop. This is making use of an elastic effect in the muscles and tendons or a joint, that’s usually called the “Stretch Shortening Cycle”
For plyometrics to work best, two things need to happen:
- The stretch needs to be very quick
- There should be very little time between the stretch and the snap-back
In truth, not all jumps are plyometrics and not all plyometrics are jumps. For example, a box jump with a slow drop and turnaround isn’t really a true plyometric, but a clapping push-up with a rapid drop and turnaround on the other hand, is.
The Four-Phase Plyometrics Intro Progression
This isn’t to say that there’s no use for other jumping exercises that don’t necessarily fit this category. In fact, if you’re new to plyometrics, it’s not a great idea to dive in at the deep end with fast reactive jumps at max effort.
Instead, we can use simpler and easier jumping & hopping movements to work our way up, depending on your level. A useful way to do this is with this 4 phase progression below
Plyometrics Phase 1 – Basic Movement & Coordination
The first phase is if you’re coming from right at the beginning and are new to training. The focus is simply on developing the basic coordination & strength to move lightly & dynamically on your feet. This will usually come from your day-to-day training in MMA or striking (grappler’s may need to do more specific work for this). The work can come from things like:
- running
- warmup drills
- skipping
- footwork drills etc.
Any form of low-intensity work that has you moving lightly and dynamically from the feet. If you’re already an experienced fighter you can skip this, but if you can’t comfortably skip for a couple of rounds without stopping several times, here is the best place to start.
Plyometrics Phase 2 – Landing & Absorbing Force
This is the foundation phase that everyone needs before doing more advanced jumping exercises. The main goal is learning the proper mechanics to absorb the force when you land (skip this and you’ll risk some joint issues later on)
In general, exercises here will take one of 2 forms
- Jumping, with a main focus sticking the landing (eg. on a [[Box Jump]] or [[Broad Jump]])
- Dropping from heights, again with the main focus on landing well (eg. a [[Depth Drop]] or [[Depth Jump]])
In these exercises, we focus on doing them right rather than doing them fast. Then building up speed and intensity over time. General guidelines for working through this phase:
- Bend your knees and hips a good amount when landing
- Work on landing softly and absorbing the force
- Practice landing on both feet first, then later on one foot
- Slowly learn to absorb force with less or a bent in the knee (note never locked, just with a little less depth in the bend)
All athletes should go through this phase. Even advanced athletes should keep practising these basic landing exercises, either alongside more difficult exercises in the next phases, or as a main focus off-camp.
Plyometrics Phase 3 – Plyometric strength
After building up some good landing skills, you can start working on more powerful jumps with the elastic “Stretch Shortening Cycle. This will usually involve jumps at max effort (eg. Vertical or Boaod Jump), and/or multiple continuous jumps in a row. Exercises you could typically use in Phase 3 are:
- Continuous pogo hops
- Small Hurdle Hops
- Alternating Split jumps
- Repeated Squat jumps
The goal here is to help the body work more efficiently and slowly teach it to:
- Minimise the turnaround time when touching the ground
- Keep the legs stiff and springy
Advanced athletes still benefit from these exercises, especially when paired with strength exercises. If you’ve had experience with plyometrics before, you can start back again at Phase 3.
Plyometrics Phase 4 – Plyometric Power
In this phase you’re training your body to:
- Generate force quickly
- Use the body’s natural stretch reflex (the elastic effect again)
- Activate muscle groups more efficiently
- Respond faster to muscle reflexes
These exercises in particular focus on very small, quick movements, with short elastic actions through the muscles and the fastest turnaround times possible. Possible phase 4 exercise would be:
High hurdle jumps
- Rebound jumps
- Bounding
- Distance hops
- Pogo hops
You can progress these exercises by switching from double-leg to single-leg movements, and from in movements in place to movements in different directions.
Scaling Intensity
With all other forms of training we do, whether strength, cardio or technical training, we always start off lighter and less intense and progress our way up to higher volumes of training and higher levels of intensity. This is for good reason, it’s how we develop, and plyometrics are no different.
What is worth thinking about is the way in which we do this – how much we increase volume by, and how we track and increase intensity. As mentioned at the start, it’s hard to measure exactly how tough plyometric exercises are, but there are some basic rules we can follow when planning training.
With plyometrics in particular, we don’t just increase volume and intensity, but we change the type and approach of the exercises we use. Over time this can look like:
- Switching from single reps to continuous jumps
- From mid-intensity effort to max effort
- From slow to fast turnarounds
- From larger “looser” movements, so short, compact, springy ones.
But when looking to adjust the intensity of a plyometric it comes down to 3 main factors:
- How fast you hit the ground
- The higher you land from, the harder the exercise
- How long you stay on the ground
- Faster turnarounds = higher intensity
- Whether you land on one or two feet
- This adds intensity because all the load & force is focused on one leg instead of being spread across two.
Scaling Workload (Volume)
Because there is only a small amount of research at this point, there are no universally accepted, hard and fast rules on the correct amount of plyometrics to do. The most likely reality here is that this amount will vary depending both on the individual person, and it will be especially dependent on the sport they’re doing. Track & field athletes, rugby players, basketball players etc will all have to include a lot of max effort jumping.
Fighters on the other hand will most likely benefit more from focussing on large amounts of small, ankle-focused jumps like pogos, and less from from box jumps, vertical jumps etc. In a bout, fighters might do hundreds of tiny bouncing movements as part of their footwork. This means they need good jumping endurance in their ankles and calves. This doesn’t mean that larger jumps should be cut out completely (drop lunges for example can be a good option if you’re planning on throwing a lot of jumping knees to the head), but overall we’ll want less of a focus on these movements, for fewer sets and reps overall.
The appropriate workload is ultimately decided by what feels challenging. For example, you could start with 3 sets of pogos for 25 seconds. Session by session you can increase the amount by 5-10 seconds, or add an extra set, to find a challenging level of volume, once you feel like you have it down, you can move on to a more difficult variation in the next phase
The main key here is to not jump into the deep end (forgive the pun) with high-intensity jumps right off the bat. Biting off more than you can chew too early will increase your risk of injury, and frankly have very little payoff for fighting anyway.
Example Plyometric Program For Fighters
Phase 2 (Starting Phase)
Block 1 (3 Weeks)
- Depth Drops: 3×5
- Pogo Jumps: 3×20-30
Block 2 (3 Weeks)
- Single Leg Depth Drops: 3×5
- Pogo Jumps: 3×35-45
Phase 3
Block 3 (4 Weeks)
- Depth Jumps: 3×5-8
- Single Leg Pogo Jumps: 3×20-30
Block 4 (4 Weeks)
- Single Leg Depth Drops: 3×5
- Single Leg Pogo Jumps: 3×35-45
Block 5 (2 Weeks)
- Depth Drop To Hurdle Jump: 2-3×4-5
- Single Leg Depth Drop To Broad Jump: 2-3×4-5
- Single Leg Lateral Pogo Jumps: 3×35-45
Phase 4
Block 6 (3 Weeks)
- Depth Drop To Hurdle Jump: 3×3
- Skater Bounds 3×3
- Split Stance Lateral Pogo Jumps: 3×25-35
Block 7 (3 Weeks)
- Depth Drop To Hurdle Jump: 3×5
- Skater Bounds 3×5
- Split Stance Lateral Pogo Jumps: 3×35-45
Block 8 (2 Week Taper)
- Depth Drop To Hurdle Jump: 2×3
- Skater Bounds 2×3
- Split Stance Lateral Pogo Jumps: 3×20
