One of the most misunderstood methods of training today is plyometrics, or 'plyos' as it is casually called. Even in the world of sports training among top coaches, this Russian 'secret' of training is frequently poorly defined and wrongly applied. To understand what plyometrics really is, one needs to consult the person who pioneered modern plyometrics and revolutionised sports training with it. His name is Professor Yuri Verkhoshansky, formely of the State Central Institute of Sports Science in Moscow and he pioneered this method of training more than 30 years ago to improve the speed-strength capabilities of Soviet athletes. He called this his 'shock method' and even today, he does not approve of using the word plyometrics, which originally was used to describe eccentric muscle action. During my two visits to Russia and the month he spent living in my Johannesburg home in 1992 to undertake joint research with me, I had the opportunity to discuss plyometrics with him in great detail. We examined the most popular Western textbooks on plyometrics and aerobic plyometrics and concluded that “plyometrics” is poorly understood and applied outside the land of its origin. He was appalled at some of the material in these books and shook his head at what aerobics instructors and sports coaches call plyometrics or plyometric drills.
To share our findings with instructors and personal trainers, we collaborated on a major textbook called Supertraining to explain plyometrics and other advanced Russian and Western sports training methods. Biomechanics analysis of movements with high speed video, force plates, electromyographs and muscle tension measuring devices carried out by senior engineering students under my supervision furnished new information that enlarged upon the original Russian work.
This article gives a brief overview of what plyometrics actually is and why so-called plyometric training should be called Powermetric Training, i.e. an integrated system of enhancing power in sport, as opposed to plyometric action, which occurs quite naturally in many sporting and daily activities such as running and jumping.
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